Winner: Jessica Littlewood, global operations and business transformation partner at Clifford Chance

The Personal Contribution to the Industry Award this year is dedicated to Jessica Littlewood from Clifford Chance. She has worked in the industry for 24 years and within that time has been commended for her knowledge, expertise and professionalism within the capital relief trades sector. 

She notes: “It's a real honour to win this award. I was completely surprised to receive your email. It's very nice to have been recognised by the industry.”

Littlewood is highly regarded by banks, regulators and investors alike as a leading lawyer in the synthetic securitisation market, or - as they prefer to call it within the legal world - ‘credit risk sharing’ transactions. Credit risk sharing can benefit the real economy by unlocking additional capital for lending and sharing credit risk outside the banking sector.

Littlewood has been praised for being instrumental in developing this market, where she has shown her legal prowess and creativity through her advice on many of the transactions done, often solving specific structuring issues banks were facing and thereby moving the market forward as a whole.

In addition, her peers believe that she has been a key voice of the market in dialogues about regulatory developments throughout the years. Littlewood has extensive knowledge of the market and its increasing regulatory landscape and she is clearly seen by the industry as a thought-leader.

She explains that the key to her success is down to a number of factors, which include a strategic way in which she views deals. “Seeing every deal as a partnership between the protection buyer and seller and to work with all parties in a constructive and collaborative way to get the deal done. To always go the extra mile to get a deal over the line.”

Littlewood explains that every deal comes with its challenges. However, she does note that the wonderful aspect of the CRT market is that no deal is ever the same and each comes with a little variety.

She adds: “Even if you think it is going to be a repeat, there is always a curve ball thrown into the mix. There is always a lot of regulatory change in this market and that creates a challenging backdrop against which to advise clients.”

Littlewood notes that despite having developed a strong reputation in the market, she is very grateful for the support of her colleagues at the firm, who work closely with herself and fellow partner Tim Cleary. She explains that these deals always reflect an incredible amount of expertise, dedication and hard work from the whole team and she couldn't be more thankful for their help and support.

As of July 2022, Littlewood has been appointed as global operations and business transformation partner at Clifford Chance. She says that the opportunities and challenges of navigating a leading global law firm through the post-Covid, digital world is exciting. Littlewood adds that there is certainly a great deal to think about within this sector and never a dull moment.

Her key passion is, and always has been, to see the CRT sector grow – both in terms of the size of the market and its sector, geographical footprint and number of issuers and investors. She notes that it has been wonderful to watch the development of the market over more than 20 years from a small sector with one or two participants to a truly global market with investors and issuers on all continents.

However, going forward Littlewood says that it would be good to see a more even global regulatory level playing field, as there are markets where the regulators can be a barrier to the market developing and it would be great to work with those regulators to address their concerns.

For the full list of winners and honourable mentions in this year’s SCI Capital Relief Trades Awards, click here.

*For more on the outlook for global risk transfer activity, join our complimentary webinaron 2 November at 2pm GMT. Leading CRT practitioners from Arch MI, ArrowMark Partners, Credit Benchmark and Guy Carpenter will discuss current trends in light of today’s macroeconomic headwinds. Click hereto register.*