About

Over the course of the last 26 years, Olga Morel De Reyes has held various positions within the structure of the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic and has served as general counsel since 2006. In charge of a team of 23 lawyers and nine administrative employees, Morel had a profound impact on the bank’s strategic direction. In particular, Morel recently made a proposition to the general deputy manager to change the system that was used to process the assignment of the investment bonds issued by the Central Bank, which, by law, and as the obligor, requires notification for its validity. ‘The existing practice required an internal process that could take up to two weeks for effective notification, depending on the agenda of the general counsel and the workload of the legal department. This caused tension and created an unfavourable environment within the financial system. The new structure implemented after 2008 – which has improved over time – reduced the notification time to about 20 minutes at the most’, says Morel. In his time with the Central Bank, Morel has often been credited for introducing key alterations to the legal department that have contributed to significant improvements to efficiency; changes that have largely been aimed at providing quality and expeditious service. To achieve these goals, Morel initially focused on the departments that were experiencing the greatest difficulties and subsequently pressed ahead with other divisions, establishing working principles and internal mechanisms to reduce paperwork and processing time. Morel successfully organised and streamlined the entire administrative area, allowing employees to efficiently locate, record and process incoming and outgoing documentation, as well as to achieve the proper and accurate filing of the same. Whilst Morel expresses pride in her achievement to improve the position of the legal department within the central bank: ‘I have incorporated the intangible but valuable contribution of giving credibility to the work done in the department for anything from simple transactions to complex negotiations with public and private institutions. Persons from all levels can be confident that the legal department I manage will render credible work, and that all jobs will be performed with loyalty, with the bank’s principles as our foundation’.