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As part of the largest single economy in the East African Community, Kenya-based Gulf African Bank is notable as one of the first Kenyan banks to receive clearance to provide Sharia law-compliant financial services. Assistant general manager, head of legal and company secretary Amina Bashir says that ‘the legal team is involved in the highest decision making [structures] of the bank, with the head of legal being a member of the bank’s executive management committee, human resources committee and credit committee’, highlighting the degree to which legal are trusted to provide input to the strategic direction of the company.

The legal team also had a key role in executing the complex process of completing the bank’s Sharia-compliance qualifications which ‘included liaising with different stakeholders’, as well as ‘the bank’s internal and external Sharia advisers’ and other key figures. The support of this new Islamic banking function is ongoing and over the last two years the legal team at Gulf African Bank has ‘helped to improve drafts of conventional security documents to make them Sharia compliant’. Beyond this, the team has achieved notable goals in terms of procedural efficiency improvements across the bank’s legal function. It has set up ‘a system whereby any external work that is undertaken on behalf of the bank is reviewed internally by the team’ which has led to ‘a 0% error rate in regards to the bank’s security documents and instructions’, a significant achievement with major benefits across the company. As well as these achievements, Bashir and her team of four have also positively concluded a number of disputes and advised the company on how to deal with recent regulatory changes within Kenya, as part of a highly successful past year for both the team and the company.