Former Lloyds lawyer brought in to head financial services and corporate legal team

Nationwide Building Society has merged its compliance and legal functions in the wake of a strategic review carried out in collaboration with professional services giant KPMG.

The review, which is expected to improve efficiency and cut costs, kicked off earlier this year, with the 28-person compliance function now within the remit of divisional director general counsel Liz Kelly.

Dubbed 'the lean report', the overhaul has not resulted in any redundancies but will see the building society increase its use of in-house paralegals and junior lawyers.

Nationwide is already recruiting for three additional paralegals for its 55-strong legal team, with the organisation intending to use the resource to free up the time of senior lawyers for more challenging work.

The move comes after Nationwide launched its first-ever graduate recruitment programme for the legal team last year, with three trainees joining in September 2010.

Separately, the bank has brought in former Legal & General Insurance legal head and company secretary Claire Morris. Morris, who will report to Kelly, will become Nationwide's general counsel for financial services, corporate and business. Most recently, Morris was a regulatory projects lawyer at Lloyds Banking Group, which she joined in 2009 following a four-year stint managing the legal team at Legal & General Insurance.

Kelly was appointed as general counsel at Nationwide in 2007, subsequently carrying out a full-scale restructuring of the department that led to a number of redundancies. The building society named its first panel in May 2009, with Allen & Overy, Eversheds, Burges Salmon, Olswang and Nabarro selected.