Team size: Eleven

What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

At the end of 2024, after more than a year of work, we were able to execute and close the sale of the annuity business to an American insurance company. This project required, in addition to a lot of work, a lot of creativity. The regulator imposed many new requirements on us that made it necessary to think outside the box, seek new legal alternatives, and finally present them to the regulator. The sale of this business not only involved the transfer of lifetime annuity policies, but also all the assets backing the reserves, which included publicly traded securities and instruments in many jurisdictions, as well as many real estate assets, such as corporate buildings and factories.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Always keeping calm, thinking, and discussing with the most suitable external advisors for the specific situation. It is necessary to delegate many tasks to the team, explaining the situation and the need for their support. Finally, I like to read, review, and study extensively the applicable regulations, jurisprudence, and doctrine for each case. It gives me great peace of mind to understand the legal situation in detail, and I believe that this calmness can be transmitted. Never make hasty decisions.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

I believe that the main legal trends over the past year have been personal data protection, Fintech regulation, and open finance systems, as well as everything related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. I think that AI will force lawyers to modernise the way they work, to be much better prepared, to study more, and to improve relationships with all stakeholders in order to contribute everything that AI cannot provide, such as knowledge of the company, the business, the teams, risk appetite, and so on.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

Legal teams must work very closely with the business and know and understand the company’s strategy. I firmly believe that we have a lot to contribute. I ask a lot from my team and the entire organisation so that Legal participates from the very beginning of every project, business, or idea. Legal must be much more involved in the business, understanding the goals and objectives it has. We can have very good and innovative ideas. Moreover, we are good at making constructive challenges. It is much better to contribute from the start of a project than at the end.