Key Takeaways
- Legal & General is a FTSE 100, 190-year-old UK insurer and asset manager with five business units (Retirement, Insurance, LGIM, LGC, Wealth) and approximately 10,000 employees, headquartered at One Coleman Street in the City of London.
- The applicant tracking system is SmartRecruiters at jobs.smartrecruiters.com/LegalAndGeneral, used across all business units and geographies, with high transparency on business unit, grade band, and regulatory status in each posting.
- CEO Antonio Simoes, in role since January 2024, is executing a credible strategic refresh: sharpened focus on PRT, asset management, and UK retail; divestment of non-core principal investments including CALA Homes; and an aggressive US PRT build-out.
- LGIM is one of Europe's largest asset managers at roughly 1.1 trillion pounds AUM, with global strength in passive index, fixed income, LDI, and stewardship, and growing capability in private markets through LGIMA in the US.
- Interview culture is formal, multi-round, STAR-format competency interviewing supplemented by genuine technical assessment for actuarial, investment, risk, and technology roles, with final-round case studies common for mid and senior positions.
- Hiring strongly favours candidates with relevant professional qualifications (IFoA actuarial fellowship, CFA, ACA/ACCA/CIMA, IMC, CISI) and the ability to articulate a specific long-term motivation for joining L&G rather than a generic competitor.
- Compensation is structured by grade band with disciplined salary ranges; the most productive negotiation levers are bonus targets, sign-on, and relocation support (especially for US PRT and LGIMA roles), not base salary.
- Conditional offers include five-year reference checks, DBS criminal record checks, credit and bankruptcy checks for all roles, and additional fitness-and-propriety and SMCR clearance for regulated roles.
Source basis: This guide combines the company's public careers materials, detected ATS-provider data, and ResumeGeni analysis. Employer-specific details should be read alongside the Sources section below; interview-culture guidance may synthesize public candidate reports when official documentation is limited.
About Legal & General
Application Process
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Step 1: Locate the right role on the official careers portal at legalandgeneralg
Step 1: Locate the right role on the official careers portal at legalandgeneralgroup.com/careers, which redirects all applications into the SmartRecruiters job board at jobs.smartrecruiters.com/LegalAndGeneral. The board lists roles across all five business units and clearly tags each posting with the business segment (LGIM, LGI, Retail, Group Functions, LGC), location, and grade band, which is unusually transparent for a UK FTSE 100 employer.
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Step 2: Create a SmartRecruiters candidate profile
Step 2: Create a SmartRecruiters candidate profile. You can sign in with email, LinkedIn, or Google, and the system will reuse your profile across multiple L&G applications. Upload a cleanly formatted PDF or Word CV; SmartRecruiters parses contact details, work history, and education automatically, but always review the parsed fields before submitting because mis-parsed dates and titles are a common reason applications stall in screening.
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Step 3: Complete the role-specific application form
Step 3: Complete the role-specific application form. For most UK roles you will be asked about right to work, notice period, salary expectations (be specific and use a range that reflects market data for the L&G grade band, which often appears in the requisition title), and whether you have any current or prior FCA or PRA regulated person status. For investment roles inside LGIM, expect additional questions about CFA progress, FCA SMCR (Senior Managers and Certification Regime) classification, and any past disciplinary or fitness-and-propriety matters.
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Step 4: Submit a tailored cover letter
Step 4: Submit a tailored cover letter. While not always required, including one materially improves your odds for analyst, manager, and senior roles. Address it to the named hiring manager when SmartRecruiters discloses one (it sometimes does in the requisition metadata), and explicitly reference which of the five business segments you are applying into and why that segment specifically.
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Step 5: Application acknowledgement and recruiter screen
Step 5: Application acknowledgement and recruiter screen. SmartRecruiters sends an automated acknowledgement within minutes. An internal L&G talent acquisition partner typically reviews and reaches out within one to three weeks for in-demand functions, longer for graduate scheme and internship windows where applications are batched.
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Step 6: Telephone or video screen with the recruiter
Step 6: Telephone or video screen with the recruiter. Expect 30 to 45 minutes covering motivation for L&G specifically (they do screen for this), salary, notice period, location flexibility, and a high-level walkthrough of your CV. UK financial services recruiters are professional and thorough; treat this stage as a real interview, not a formality.
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Step 7: Online assessments where applicable
Step 7: Online assessments where applicable. For graduate scheme, internship, and many early-career roles, candidates are asked to complete situational judgement tests, numerical reasoning, and sometimes a personality questionnaire delivered through providers such as Cappfinish, Arctic Shores, or HireVue-style asynchronous video. For actuarial roles, expect a numerical reasoning and abstract reasoning combination.
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Step 8: First-round interview with the hiring manager
Step 8: First-round interview with the hiring manager. Typically 45 to 60 minutes, mixing competency-based questions (UK STAR format strongly preferred) with technical questions calibrated to the role. For LGIM investment roles this can include market-views questions and brain-teasers; for actuarial roles it almost always includes a technical case or model walkthrough.
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Step 9: Second-round panel interview
Step 9: Second-round panel interview. Often two to three interviewers from the hiring team plus one cross-functional partner (Risk, Compliance, or HR). For senior roles a member of the executive committee or a managing director may join. The panel format is standard across UK financial services and is designed to test consistency under pressure.
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Step 10: Final stage assessment
Step 10: Final stage assessment. For many roles this is a case study or technical exercise: a pension risk transfer pricing exercise for Retirement actuaries, a portfolio construction memo for LGIM investment associates, an architecture diagram and design review for senior engineers, or a stakeholder presentation for change and transformation roles.
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Step 11: Offer, regulatory checks, and onboarding
Step 11: Offer, regulatory checks, and onboarding. L&G offers are typically conditional on satisfactory references covering five years of work history, a basic or enhanced DBS criminal record check, credit and bankruptcy checks (mandatory for all roles, not just regulated ones), proof of qualifications, and right-to-work documentation. SMCR-regulated roles add fitness-and-propriety attestations and may require regulatory pre-approval before a start date can be confirmed.
Resume Tips for Legal & General
Use a UK-format CV, not a US resume
Use a UK-format CV, not a US resume. Two pages is the strongly preferred maximum for everyone except executives; a one-page CV signals junior level and is appropriate only for graduates and interns. Include a short personal statement of three to four lines at the top tied directly to the L&G role and segment.
Lead with the right professional qualifications
Lead with the right professional qualifications. UK financial services hiring managers scan for letters after your name within seconds. If you are a Fellow or Associate of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (FIA, FFA, AIA), put it next to your name. The same applies to CFA charterholders and candidates (Level I, II, III passed), ACA, ACCA, CIMA, IMC, and CISI qualifications. For technology roles, AWS, Azure, GCP, and security certifications belong in a clearly labelled certifications section.
Quantify in pounds sterling and use UK number formatting
Quantify in pounds sterling and use UK number formatting. Use commas as thousand separators and full stops as decimals. Reference deal sizes, AUM, premium volumes, claims ratios, expense ratios, and headcount managed. For LGIM applicants, AUM responsibility and benchmark relative performance over multi-year periods are the headline metrics.
Mirror the SmartRecruiters job description vocabulary
Mirror the SmartRecruiters job description vocabulary. The L&G ATS scores keyword match against the requisition. Include terms such as Solvency II, IFRS 17, MA (matching adjustment), bulk annuity, longevity reinsurance, LDI, fixed income, ESG, stewardship, climate transition, and PRT where they genuinely apply to your experience. Do not keyword-stuff; the recruiter will read the CV.
Spell out regulatory exposure cleanly
Spell out regulatory exposure cleanly. Note any FCA SMCR Senior Manager Functions (SMF) or Certification Functions you have held, any PRA dealings, and your familiarity with the Consumer Duty, Operational Resilience, and Conduct Rules. For risk and compliance candidates this is non-negotiable.
For LGIM roles, include a short performance attribution line per fund or strateg
For LGIM roles, include a short performance attribution line per fund or strategy. A single-line summary such as 'Lead PM, GBP investment grade credit, AUM 4.2bn, 3yr information ratio 0.58 vs benchmark' communicates more than a full paragraph of prose.
For actuarial CVs, list your IFoA exam progress explicitly with subject codes (C
For actuarial CVs, list your IFoA exam progress explicitly with subject codes (CS1, CM1, SP2, SA2, etc.) and dates passed. Specify travel and exemptions. List the actuarial software you have used: Prophet, MoSes, AXIS, RAFM, ResQ, Igloo, Tyche, R, and Python.
For technology and data roles, highlight regulated-environment experience
For technology and data roles, highlight regulated-environment experience. Naming financial services platforms (Murex, Calypso, BlackRock Aladdin, SimCorp, Charles River, Bloomberg AIM) and concepts (T+1 settlement, NAV calculation, regulatory reporting, MiFID II transaction reporting) significantly strengthens the application.
Show evidence of long-term thinking
Show evidence of long-term thinking. L&G is a 190-year-old mutual-spirited institution and screens against people who jump every eighteen months. If you have stayed three or more years somewhere, surface what you delivered across that tenure. If your CV looks transient, add brief context (project end, restructure) for short stints.
Save and submit as a PDF generated from a clean Word document
Save and submit as a PDF generated from a clean Word document. Avoid graphical CV templates with columns, sidebars, and icons; SmartRecruiters parses these poorly and the resulting profile fields will look incomplete to the recruiter.
ATS System: SmartRecruiters
Legal & General uses SmartRecruiters as its enterprise applicant tracking system across all five business units and all geographies, with the public-facing job board hosted at jobs.smartrecruiters.com/LegalAndGeneral. SmartRecruiters is a modern, cloud-based ATS used by many large European employers and is generally well-regarded for candidate experience compared with older systems. It parses uploaded CVs into structured candidate profiles, supports SSO sign-in via LinkedIn and Google, and feeds applications directly into a recruiter pipeline tagged by requisition. L&G has clearly invested in the configuration: each posting exposes the business unit, sub-business unit, job family, grade band, working hours, and whether the role is FCA or PRA regulated. This level of transparency is unusually high for UK financial services and is a meaningful signal that the talent acquisition function is operating at a mature standard.
- Apply through the SmartRecruiters portal directly rather than via third-party aggregators. Aggregator-sourced applications occasionally lose required custom fields and can land in the wrong recruiter queue.
- Reuse your SmartRecruiters profile across multiple L&G roles. Once you have applied once, subsequent applications are largely pre-filled and your candidate history is visible to recruiters across business units.
- Always review the auto-parsed CV fields after upload. SmartRecruiters parsing is good but not perfect, and incorrect employment dates or job titles can cause your profile to be filtered out incorrectly.
- Use the keyword vocabulary from the requisition. SmartRecruiters surfaces relevance scoring to recruiters, and matching the exact phrasing in the job ad (for example, writing 'bulk purchase annuity' if the ad says it, rather than 'BPA') measurably helps.
- Set up job alerts on the portal for your target business unit. SmartRecruiters supports saved searches that email you when matching roles open, which matters because L&G publishes most graduate, internship, and high-volume operations roles in batched windows.
- Watch your application status updates. SmartRecruiters sends meaningful status changes (under review, interview, offer, regret) and L&G recruiters generally use those statuses honestly. If your status sits at 'under review' for more than three weeks, a polite LinkedIn follow-up to the named recruiter on the requisition is acceptable.
Interview Culture
Legal & General interviews follow the conventions of large UK financial services employers and should be approached as a professional, formal process.
What Legal & General Looks For
- Genuine motivation for L&G specifically. The single most common reason candidates fail at interview is being unable to articulate why L&G rather than Aviva, Phoenix, M&G, Schroders, or Aberdeen. Have a real answer that ties to PRT leadership, LGIM scale, the Simoes transformation, or the long-term capital deployment thesis.
- Technical credibility appropriate to the grade band. L&G grade bands (4, 4L, 5L, 6, 6L, 7, 7L, H7, etc.) signal scope and complexity. A grade 4 hire is expected to have functional competence; a grade 6 hire is expected to lead workstreams; H7 and senior leadership grades expect P&L, regulatory, or technical authority.
- Professional qualifications or a clear path to them. Actuaries on the IFoA pathway, CFA candidates and charterholders, ACA/ACCA/CIMA accountants, IMC and CISI qualified investment professionals, and PRINCE2/Agile certified change professionals are all explicitly favoured.
- Evidence of regulated-industry judgement. Interviewers want to see that you understand why a control exists, when to escalate, how to document a decision, and how to balance commercial pressure with regulatory obligation.
- Long-term thinking and stability. L&G is the opposite of a churn culture. Candidates with a coherent career narrative and meaningful tenure at past employers screen better than those with frequent moves.
- Cross-functional collaboration in a matrixed organisation. Group functions, business units, and regional offices interact constantly. Examples of working effectively across boundaries (Risk and Front Office, Actuarial and Finance, IT and Operations) carry real weight.
- Clear writing and structured verbal communication. Insurance and asset management are dense subject areas. Interviewers will notice whether you can explain a complex idea simply, both in writing and in a meeting.
- Alignment with the stated culture. L&G publishes its values openly: Inclusive, Purposeful, Ambitious, Trusted, Collaborative. Interviewers genuinely use these as scoring dimensions, not corporate decoration.
- For LGIM specifically: investment views you can defend. Passive teams want to hear methodology and operational excellence; active teams want differentiated, evidenced views on companies, sectors, or macro factors with awareness of where you have been wrong and what you learned.
- For Retirement and PRT: deal experience or strong actuarial fundamentals. The PRT business is in growth mode, with a US build-out adding capacity. Candidates who can speak to bulk annuity pricing, longevity reinsurance, asset sourcing, and sponsor negotiations are in particular demand.
- For technology, data, and AI: practical financial services delivery. Polished cloud and ML credentials matter, but L&G also values candidates who have shipped change in a regulated estate with legacy interfaces, security review gates, and operational resilience constraints.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Related Resources
Sources
- Legal & General Group plc - Official Careers Page —
- Legal & General Job Board on SmartRecruiters —
- Legal & General SmartRecruiters Public API (99 active postings verified) —
- Legal & General Group plc - Corporate Investor Relations and Strategy —
- Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) - Institutional Site —
- Antonio Simoes Appointed Group Chief Executive of Legal & General (January 2024) —
- Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) - Qualification Pathway —
- FCA Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) Overview —
- London Stock Exchange - Legal & General Group plc (LGEN) Listing —