About

Insurance specialist, Groupama Seguros’ chief legal and compliance officer prides himself on building the company’s in-house department from scratch. A veteran lawyer in Groupama, Luís Poças joined the company in 1995 and has held a variety of legal roles, giving legal advice to different divisions. By 2010, thanks to his diversified experience, he had obtained very good knowledge of the company’s business and was asked to create the centralised legal department. A major development for Groupama, the creation of the in-house department placed legal issues at the centre of the company’s agenda and brought coherence, significant cost-reduction and efficient legal solutions to business problems. ‘Now all major decisions of the management are taken based on an assessment of legal and compliance implications. Moreover, law is now viewed as a source of solutions to problems that are not strictly legal’, he comments. Poças acknowledges that the financial crisis has had a major impact on the business life insurance market in all developed countries, with asset-liability mismatch being the biggest challenge to face. ‘This problem is a priority in the company’s agenda and we have been studying and implementing very innovative legal solutions, which have been raising the attention and utmost interest of other Portuguese insurance companies and from our parent company in France’. A high profile figure, Poças holds other influential positions beside his role in Groupama. He is the author of three books on insurance and finance law and he has published a list of scientific legal articles. He is member of the board of directors of AIDA Portugal, the Portuguese chapter of the International Law Association and member of two technical committees of the Portuguese Insurers Association. Poças disseminates this vast knowledge of insurance law through lecturing for post-graduate courses and at conferences.