Natalie is a Partner in our Financial Services & Markets Department, and leads the firm’s cross-disciplinary Fintech, Market Infrastructure and Payments (FMIP) Group.
She has considerable experience of working with financial market infrastructures, payment institutions and other fintech clients, particularly in the fast-moving and highly innovative clearing, settlement and payments space and in relation to the development of new platforms and products using DLT and cloud technologies.
Natalie advises the main UK and international payment and settlement systems on the broad spectrum of UK, EU, and other international laws and regulations affecting them. These clients are responsible for transactions involving trillions of pounds worth of financial assets on a daily basis and provide complex fintech infrastructure which is integral to the day-to-day operation of the world's financial markets and systems.
Natalie has been recognised for a number of years for her work in Legal 500 and in Chambers and Partners UK, with clients describing Natalie as "A superb lawyer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of financial markets regulation and the fintech industry "and having "outstanding commercial sense, helping clients make difficult decisions that balance [our] risk appetite and commercial imperatives". Natalie is an active member of leading FMI and fintech-related trade associations. Natalie regularly contributes to industry-wide lobbying efforts affecting the FMIP client base, including as a member of the Financial Markets Law Committee’s Infrastructure Scoping Forum and through participation in City of London Law Society, Invest Europe and other working groups covering a diverse range of financial services and markets topics, including settlement finality, conflicts of laws, custody, insolvency, DLT, cryptoassets and other fintech developments.
Natalie is the firm's lead financial services lawyer on many of our most innovative and cutting-edge projects, including the bespoke design and implementation of new payment and settlement systems and the launch of new fintech products and payments "overlay" services. She has received recognition for her innovative work in the FT's Innovative Lawyers Europe 2021 Report in which she was celebrated in their Top 10 shortlist of "Legal Practitioners who look to the future" and Natalie led the Travers Smith team that won the "Moving the Market Forward" FT Innovative Lawyers Award in 2021 for the launch of a new Euro payments mechanism with systemic importance to the market.
Prior to joining Travers Smith, Natalie advised a network of US-headquartered exchanges and central counterparties (CCPs) operating in the UK, the US, and Singapore. She gained further experience in the clearing and settlement space as in-house Manager and Regulatory Lawyer to UK-based CCP, LCH.