Charlotte Henry
Charlotte is widely regarded as one of Australia and the United Kingdom’s leading financial services regulatory lawyers.
Charlotte has over 23 years’ experience in financial services spanning NZ, UK, Europe and now Australia. She assists banks, payment firms/systems, fintechs, retail wealth management businesses, retail brokerage businesses, distribution platforms and non-bank lenders on complex issues relating to market entrance and cross border sales, development of new products / services, strategic direction, good governance, managing legal, regulatory and operational risks, advising on conduct, compliance and risk governance, implementing regulatory change and other transformational projects, digitisation, integration projects, relationships with regulators (in particular APRA, ASIC, AUSTRAC and AFCA) and remediation programmes.
In addition, Charlotte assists those who invest into the sector, project managing due diligence, regulatory compliance reviews and obtaining regulator consent. Charlotte’s expertise is in Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing, Consumer Credit, Prudential Standards and APRA requirements, Bank Governance Regulation including BEAR, Banking Act requirements, the financial services provisions of the Corporations Act (including product governance/DDO), Digital Financial Services laws, Payments laws, Fintech laws, Unfair Contact Terms and ASIC requirements (including under the ASIC Act), Advertising laws, licensing laws and process (including bank licensing), approvals for changes of control in regulated entities and using FSTRA for integration.
Charlotte is recognised as a leading financial institutions lawyer in the peer reviewed Australian edition of Best Lawyers 2024.
Background
Charlotte was previously a regulator at the UK Regulator, the Financial Services Authority (now Financial Conduct Authority) and worked in-house at the UK’s 3rd largest retail bank, an Irish bank and a PE house.
Charlotte holds a Bachelor of Laws with Honours (LLB) (Hons), Bachelor of Arts (BA) Psychology & Criminology from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Charlotte is admitted to practice in England and Wales, Ireland, New South Wales and New Zealand.
Experience & expertise
Selected matters
- advised ANZ on the corporate governance aspects of its group reorganisation that completed in January 2023
- hosted the RBA’s roundtable where it launched Australia’s first retail CBDC pilot and engaged to act on 3 of the selected ‘use cases’ in that pilot
- advised the distributor in relation to the Australian market’s very first ASIC supervisory and enforcement action and now court proceedings against an issuer of credit cards under the new design and distribution regulatory regime
- advised on a proposed large scale carbon offset project, including in respect to mechanisms for generation of carbon credits (ACCUs) and project structuring
- advised a range of banks on Australia’s newest regulatory regimes including the Financial Accountability Regime (replacing BEAR), breach reporting regime, Design and Distribution Obligations (product governance) and changes to prudential standards
- created Suncorp Bank’s first set of visual terms and conditions for its PayLater product, which are also the first of their kind for a buy-now-pay-later product in the Australian banking market
- advised 2 of the Australian market’s purchased payment facility licenceholders on new product launches and services and their licensing
- assisted Australia’s flagship payment system, Eftpos, to obtain a novel AML exemption for a recent acquisition of Eftpos, namely Beemit, the instant payment app/business, which we also assisted to establish
- advised ANZ on the sale of its merchant acquiring business to global payments firm, Worldline
- regulatory support on over 100 M&A, IPO, Take Private, PE and VC deals including for M&A divisions of banks and 3 of the world’s largest PE houses including NAB’s acquisition of the retail banking business of Citibank in 2022 and subsequent integration, ANZ’s acquisition of Suncorp Bank in 2023, Bain’s takeover of airline, Virgin Australia, in 2021
