What are the key projects you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

ADL Digital Lab S.A.S. (ADL) is the first multi-entity digital laboratory in Latin America and the innovation and digitalisation company of the largest financial group in Colombia, Grupo Aval’s Financial Conglomerate (Grupo Aval). Among others, the Group includes four traditional banks (Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente, Banco Popular and Banco AV Villas), a financial corporation (Corficolombiana), a company specialised in deposits and electronic payments (Dale), a trust company (Aval Fiduciaria) and a pension and severance funds’ management company (Porvenir), all of them located in Colombia, as well as several financial institutions in Central America.

As such, ADL strengthens the digital transformation processes of Grupo Aval’s entities, digitalising their products, channels and processes to achieve operational efficiencies. It provides them with technological infrastructure, digital marketing, cloud and data services, as well as designing and recommending innovative products to the benefit of Grupo Aval’s entities. ADL is also the holding company of the digital ecosystems of the group, including the mobility ecosystem (Carroya.com S.A.S. and Facilpass S.A.S.), the housing ecosystem (Metrocuadrado com S.A.S.) and the insurance ecosystem (Seguros ADL Ltda.), all of which seek to provide a broad portfolio of financial services to its customers into end-to-end digital experience.

As ADL’s general counsel, I lead the company’s legal team, which is not only responsible for ADL’s legal strategy and daily legal work, acting as an internal business partner, ensuring corporate governance and conducting contract negotiations, but also performs the same role for its affiliates, the four ecosystems.

How can in-house counsel use AI to improve efficiency while maintaining quality, governance and integrity within legal teams?

By automating high-volume, routine tasks, such as preparing drafts, conducting research, documentation review for due diligence and organising files, among others, AI reduces legal administrative burden away, shifting the in-house counsel’s job toward high-value strategic advisory and enhances decision-making capabilities. To ensure that efficiency does not compromise legal quality, in-house counsel should maintain continuous oversight, ensuring grounded AI outputs. Also, in order to keep governance and integrity, AI used by legal teams should be backed by robust data protection policies, responsible AI guidelines and strict access controls, guaranteeing that confidential corporate information is never disclosed to the public or used to train GenAI.

How do you manage situations where legal advice and commercial objectives conflict?

To become a strategic partner to the business, in-house legal counsel must bridge the gap between risk mitigation and commercial objectives, navigating conflicts between legal advice and business strategy. In light of this, whenever there is a conflict between legal constraints and commercial goals, I avoid taking a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ posture, working collaboratively to reframe challenges, identify creative legal alternatives and align solutions with the company’s risk appetite. Furthermore, recognising that innovation usually carries ambiguity, I keep in mind that achieving commercial growth often requires accepting calculated, low-to-moderate legal risks rather than pursuing absolute risk elimination, enabling innovation without compromising corporate integrity.