Charmian Holmes

Partner, Head of Funds and Financial Services

Charmian is a highly regarded financial services regulation lawyer. She is known for her pragmatic and consensus based approach to legal and compliance issues. Whether she’s negotiating a sale, helping clients connect to do business or mentoring our up-and-coming lawyers, Charmian reads the room and puts people at ease with her down-to-earth nature.

Charmian provides legal and compliance advice to a broad range of financial services industry participants including insurance brokers, general insurers, underwriting agencies, fintechs and insurtechs. She is often engaged to provide legal sign off on product design and development and insurance distribution, including group purchasing arrangements. She is sought out for her niche expertise in innovative insurance solutions including parametric products, discretionary mutuals and aggregate deductible schemes.

Charmian advises on all aspects of financial services law, she loves nothing more than devising new risk products and solutions – like peer-to-peer models and other alternative risk vehicles. She also thrives on helping businesses grow and develop over time, from seed funding through to acquisition or IPO. Startups often seek her out when they need a sounding board to refine their ideas. She creatively finds new solutions that are within the boundaries of the law yet commercial in their execution.

Prior to joining Hamilton Locke, Charmian was a partner and co-founder of The Fold Legal, which merged with Hamilton Locke on 1 September 2022. Prior to that, she worked in the corporate and financial services team at Phillips Fox Lawyers (now DLA Piper).

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Financial Services; Insurance; Discretionary Mutuals; Insurtech; Fintech; Cryptocurrency; Regulatory; Corporate Advisory

AWARDS

Chambers and Partners, Fintech Legal Guide, Ranked Firm, Band 1, 2025
Chamber and Partners, Fintech Legal Guide, Ranked Lawyer, Band 3, 2025
Australasian Lawyer, Elite Women 2022
Chamber and Partners, Fintech Legal Guide, Ranked Lawyer, Band 2, 2019-2024
Lawyers Weekly, Partner of the Year Awards, Financial Services, Finalist 2022 and 2021
Fintech Business Awards, Fintech Thought Leader of the Year, 2019
Chambers and Partners, Fintech Legal Guide, Ranked Firm, Band 2, 2019 – 2022
Chambers and Partners, Asia-Pacific Guide, Financial Services Regulation, Ranked Firm, Band 4, 2020 – 2022
Client Choice Awards, Best Law & Related Services Specialist Firm (>$30m) – Banking & Finance, 2020, 2022
Client Choice Awards, Best Law & Related Services Specialist Firm (>$30m) – Insurance, 2021 – 2022
Fintech Australia, Finnies Award, ‘Excellence in Support Services’, Winner 2018, Finalist 2019 – 2022

QUALIFICATIONS

Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Laws – The University of Queensland
Admitted to practice in Queensland

SELECTED REPRESENTATIONS

Appointed by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (Australian branch) (since 2020) to advise on financial services regulation and insurance product design and distribution and procurement and contracting arrangements, such as binder and master service agreements.
Advised Amtrust North America (since 2014) in relation to the accidental damage component of Microsoft Complete, an extended warranty and accidental damage product, offered to Australian customers to protect their Microsoft devices.
Appointed to the external legal panel for Arthur J. Gallagher & Co (Aus) Limited (since 2018) to advise on financial services regulation and licensing, insurance design and distribution, group purchasing body arrangements and commercial arrangements with insurers including agency, binder and SME insurance facilities.
Acted for Uber CarShare, Australia’s leading car-sharing platform owned by Uber, on the establishment of a discretionary mutual to protect exposures for borrowers and lenders to the car-sharing platform and advised on the impact of product design and distribution laws.
Acted for PICNIC Labs on their peer-to-peer insurtech model including Australian insurance regulation and the use of discretionary mutuals. We have acted for PICNIC on the launch of Our Ark Mutual – Australia’s first community based mutual supporting organisations in the religious, education, aged care and not-for-profit space to source risks.
Advised Zip Money on partnering with Cover Genius to offer product insurance for purchases made by customers using ZIP’s payment services including deferred sales model, hawking, design and distribution, financial services authorisations and privacy.
Advised KOBA Insurance, Australia’s first kilometre-based car insurance provider on their strategic alliance and authorised representative agreements, and all aspects of their go-to-market including website collateral, financial services guide and insurance documents, terms of business, privacy policy and terms of use.
Advised Open Insurance, an Australian and UK insurtech using APIs for the sale of the embedded insurance offers, on their partnering arrangements with Australian retailers including AHM and Telstra and financial services licensing and procurement arrangements.
Acts for CoinSpot, one of Australia’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, since 2017 on a range of legal, corporate and regulatory matters.
Acted for Limepay in the establishment of a joint venture business with Domain Group and their pre-IPO convertible note issue.
Acted for BAC Insurance Brokers in a 50% sale of shares in the company to Steadfast Group Limited and separately for Westcourt General Insurance Brokers in the sale of their business to IAG Limited.