About

In 2018-2019, the Bank has been engaged in two complex proceedings related to the Bank’s products, conducted by the President of the Consumer and Competition Protection Office, Poland’s anti-trust authority, and in two significant court cases related to our card business. I have been personally involved in the strategic and operational aspects of these cases. I am also focused on supporting the Bank’s IT units in their relations with external providers and on the legal aspects of new lines of the bank’s business – including e-banking and payment services.

In 2018, I was temporarily delegated to perform the role of the Bank’s chief compliance officer. Since the beginning of 2019 I have acted as the chief project manager of PSD2 implementation, currently the Bank’s largest regulatory, business and IT project.

What changes have you made to the workings of the legal department during your time in your current role? How has that affected the wider company?

Bank Pocztowy is a local post bank with a limited legal budget. We appoint external law firms for a narrow scope of cases, with the rest of the tasks dealt with in-house. To work effectively, I had to adjust our structure accordingly. I identified the best lawyers in most important areas of our business and made them responsible for the coordination of respective workflows. As a result, the department’s current structure resembles a one-stop shop fully professional legal firm, with each of the department’s 11 staff covering a specific legal area. I think that this is good both for my team and for the entire organisation.

If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or GC what would it be and why?

Such people should have strong faith in themselves and in other team members, should be open-minded, systematic and persistent. And they should be able to have fun at work.

What do you feel are the pros and cons of an in-house legal role compared to a private practice one?

I do not see any cons. After 14 successful years in external law firms I perceive my current role as optimal for me. I am interested in management matters and I have started my doctoral thesis in legal risk management.

FOCUS ON… TRUSTCOIN

From the early years of my professional career I strongly believe that the lawyer’s job is all about trust. I recall how I enjoyed the full support of my past supervisors, including Artur Zawadowski (ex-Weil Gotshal and Manges) and Dr Marcin Olechowski (Sołtysiński Kawecki & Szlęzak). I know that we could fully rely on each other. My clients also showed me that I am reliable for them. Not only did they communicate this to me, two of my clients (Immusec and FCA-Group Bank Polska) asked me to join their supervisory boards. We continued our relationship years after I left the consulting sector and became an in-house lawyer.

Before joining Bank Pocztowy, I hardly had any in-house experience. However, managers of the Bank had faith in me and gave me a chance to start pursuing the managerial path. That is how the most interesting part of my professional life began. During my first year I had to build relationship with the lawyers I worked with. Some of them were much older than I was and they all had in-house experience. It was the time we all had to work on gaining each other’s trust. And we have succeeded — now we are a very solid team. Despite working at two separate locations (Warsaw and Bydgoszcz), we have developed a strong culture of co-operation and I know we can rely on each other.

However, I also had to win the trust and confidence of the management board, my current supervisor Jolanta Ciążyńska-Syka, the Bank’s key managers
as well as other internal clients. The effort really
paid off – I have become one of the leaders at the Bank and I know that my voice is now heard by others.

I had my moments of doubt and there were a few difficult situations when I felt that one of my supervisors did not trust me and undermined my professional judgement. I almost quit as I found it almost impossible to work in the circumstances. Fortunately, we resolved the differences, rebuilt the professional relationship, and ultimately came out unscathed from that situation.
In early 2019 I was offered a fantastic and exceptional opportunity to become the leader of the Bank’s largest project. And again, I had to earn the trust of colleagues − more than 100 professionals from the business, IT, marketing and other areas of the bank who worked under my guidance. We succeeded both in terms of timely delivery and quality of the project, and now the group of people I can trust is much bigger. I am proud and happy to be a part of the team.

It’s important to remember that as lawyers we deal in an exceptional currency which I call “trustcoin”. I perceive it my mission to never let it devaluate.

IN THE WORDS OF NOMINATORS:

Throughout 2019 Agnieszka Modras, the head of legal department of Bank Pocztowy, and other lawyers from the department were engaged in all of the Bank’s significant business initiatives. First, Modras was appointed as the leader of the largest project in the Bank dedicated to conduct implementation by the Bank of new requirements of PSD2 directive. Among the project’s main tasks one can name setting up the dedicated API platform for so called “open banking” as well as establishing “strong consumer authentication” methods in e-banking platforms and other Bank-client remote contact channels, involving the necessity to coordinate works of three various external IT providers. Under her direction, a team of over 100 employees, divided into several streams (IT, business, marketing, regulatory, tests) have worked for months with the usage of traditional and agile project management techniques. The project succeeded and Bank Pocztowy timely met all the regulatory deadlines. In this project the support of external legal advisors was significantly limited. Second, Modras has been personally engaged in another project related to development of the Bank’s new e-banking and mobile platform named EnveloBank.