About

‘The ultimate success of a legal team is how intrinsic it is to the way business is done’, opines Pita Williams. ‘This flows from how well it collaborates with the business’. Effective legal and regulatory checks have become ever more crucial in the financial services industry over the past 10 years. Williams impresses legal and business professionals alike with her thorough grasp of the industry pressure points, and holistic approach to tackling legal risk. ‘In a global entity such as QBE, changes in laws overseas can impact the whole organisation’, she says. ‘For example, legislation regulating bribery in the UK, the USA and Australia can have a major impact on our related companies which are outside those jurisdictions, so the legal teams around the world work together to embed a QBE view, training and processes which can suit the organisation as a whole’. Leading a 22-strong team across legal and compliance, Williams has repositioned QBE’s Australian legal function to work more closely with its international counterparts. ‘In recent years my team has had to embrace a more global viewpoint’, she explains. ‘We have moved from being an Australia-centric team to a team which actively seeks to understand the impact of business decisions across QBE as a whole’. Praised highly for her capacity to manage teams and build relationships, she has made integration a key focus of her tenure as the global insurer’s Australia GC. ‘The team is incredibly well regarded in the business and this is not always the case in some companies’, she says. ‘In my view, this is because we have specifically set out to build relationships in the business units to become involved with day-to-day operations. We offer practical solutions to issues based on our knowledge of the business but also of the industry as a whole. The team is accessible and regards itself as part of the business rather than separate from it’. Williams’ efforts in developing her teams have been recognised by the wider business, so that many of them now report straight to the chief risk officer. This restructuring has consolidated Williams’ position as a mentor and coach with those teams, and being able to devote more time to influencing the business via strategic pieces of work. Williams feels one of her biggest challenges as a manager comes down to tackling the conflict between the industry’s rapid pace of change and lawyers’ naturally risk-averse nature. ‘The increasing complexity of business means that change is constant and has become the new normal – the pace will only increase’, she says. ‘However, the legal profession hasn’t necessarily changed with it’. Her approach is to harness her team’s strengths, establishing clear parameters, while also encouraging individuals to ‘see outside the legal box’. ‘As in-house counsel we need to think more broadly than the legal prism and seek to enable the organisation to make things happen – often by approaching challenges in an untraditional manner’. The same criticism can, of course, be levelled at private practice lawyers, but Williams sees unlocked potential in their relationships with in-house lawyers. ‘In many ways they are disadvantaged by being consultants and yet, this is also their advantage’, she says. ‘They can often identify trends before in-house counsel and could truly add value by gaining a better, deeper understanding of the business challenges. I look forward to the day when outside counsel provide me with an exciting idea or proposal we’ve never heard of before’.