Team size: 49

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

Over the past year, my team has been engaged in highly complex and strategic transactions across multiple jurisdictions, focusing on capital markets, structured finance, and innovative funding solutions. This includes structuring large-scale debt instruments under evolving regulatory frameworks, ensuring compliance with stringent disclosure and governance requirements, and introducing market-leading legal protections for investors and issuers.

We have also delivered innovative solutions in renewable energy financing, consolidating multi-entity guarantees into streamlined facilities to support sustainability objectives and improve operational efficiency. In addition, we pioneered new Islamic finance products and developed template agreements backed by enforceability and tax opinions, setting a benchmark for future offerings.

Our work spans multi-jurisdictional coordination, regulatory engagement, and collaboration with external counsel to ensure technical soundness and market integrity. These projects demonstrate our ability to combine legal innovation with strategic impact, enabling the business to mobilise capital effectively and support its growth trajectory.

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

In times of instability or crisis, my focus is on embedding legal resilience into the bank’s broader risk and continuity framework. I take a proactive stance by ensuring our Business Continuity Plans are legally sound. This includes reviewing contractual obligations, regulatory requirements, and governance structures to maintain critical banking operations without exposing the bank to legal or compliance risk.

On the resolution side, I prioritise operational continuity, which is essential for systemic stability. This involves structuring entities and contractual frameworks to enable the seamless continuity of core business lines.

Strategically, I anticipate legal vulnerabilities, integrate them into resilience planning, and maintain transparent communication with key stakeholders. This ensures compliance, operational stability, and protects the bank’s reputation. I see my role as a leader who shapes strategic direction and strengthens organisational resilience during periods instability or stress whilst preserving trust, safeguarding critical functions, and positioning the organisation for recovery and long-term sustainability

What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws?

I am driving a future-ready digital transformation within my team, optimising matter, document, and data management through platforms like iManage. This initiative is delivering significant improvements in retrieval, filing, version control, and reporting, enabling the legal function to make faster, more informed decisions.

I am also driving platform integration by developing APIs that connect core business systems, such as Salesforce, with iManage to eliminate duplicate data entry and strengthen data integrity across platforms.

Risk and Compliance is integrated throughout both the development and implementation phases. We conduct privacy impact assessments, enforce role-based access controls, and ensure encryption and secure storage in full alignment with South Africa’s POPIA.

We are also leveraging AI capabilities, including Copilot AI and Power BI, to enhance document drafting and reporting efficiency. AI usage is governed by strict internal policies and aligned with emerging AI governance frameworks to ensure transparency and ethical application.

As in-house digital sponsor, I am committed to ensuring that this transformation not only delivers measurable efficiency gains but also strengthens regulatory compliance and positions the legal team to fully leverage AI-driven innovations. My focus is on building a future-ready legal team that delivers operational excellence while embracing technological innovation, ensuring we remain ahead in an increasingly digital and highly regulated environment.

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?

My team actively supports the business strategy by driving revenue growth and enhancing the overall client experience. We ensure that strategic transactions move seamlessly from pipeline to execution without legal delays.

For example, we recently led Benchmark Reform, transitioning legacy contracts and financial instruments to new risk-free rates. This was critical for market integrity and client trust and required complex contract remediation and regulatory engagement.

Under Project Alma, we delivered several high-impact outcomes, including creating pre-agreement disclosure statements to meet regulatory requirements, developing new custody agreements to enable business expansion, and designing sustainability-linked facility templates to align with the bank’s ESG strategy.

We also spearheaded the review and standardisation of the CIB Client Agreement, which governs the overarching terms and conditions of client onboarding. Standardising these documents ensures global corporate clients receive consistent documentation and that identical review protocols are applied across all markets, strengthening governance and client experience.

Through these initiatives, we enable the business to deliver faster, serve clients better and capture growth opportunities.