Team size: 10 in-house professionals in Grupo Colpatria — a deliberately multidisciplinary team, not exclusively composed of lawyers, bringing together expertise across law, investments, compliance, non-financial risks and sustainability. The broader reporting structure encompasses over 40 professionals across controlled and non-controlled investments with direct reporting lines to the me, via legal reporting and follow up meetings.

What are the key projects you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

The past twelve months have been among the most consequential in Grupo Colpatria’s recent history — and the legal and governance team has been at the center of each defining moment.

The completion of the Scotiabank Colpatria M&A transaction marked the end of the Group’s presence in traditional banking and the beginning of a sharper strategic focus on infrastructure, insurance and private equity. In this transaction, as VP legal and corporate governance, I was an active participant in the negotiation alongside the CEO and CFO, leading the legal structuring and documentation. Beyond the transaction itself, I’m contributing to the internal conversations about the Group’s potential future re-entry into the financial sector — bringing a legal and governance lens to a long-term strategic question.

Through an M&A process, the Group also acquired a minority stake in Concesión Vial Pacífico 3, one of Colombia’s major fourth-generation road concessions. My role included document negotiation and, crucially, helping shape the risk framework for the Group’s infrastructure investment line — integrating legal and non-financial risk analysis.

I have also been deeply involved in arbitration proceedings related to infrastructure and technology projects. Given their ongoing nature, I cannot share further detail — but in each case, I have participated as a strategic actor, defining and reshaping litigation strategies, preparing and drafting documents. I definitely try not to become a process manager.

Can you describe an instance where your legal advice directly influenced business strategy or commercial objectives?

The most significant example goes beyond any single transaction: it is the transformation of what the VP legal and corporate governance function does within the Group and its investments — and the team that made it possible. When I joined, the legal function had a classical perimeter — contracts and corporate secretariat. I made the decision to expand it deliberately, integrating the compliance, non-financial risk and sustainability areas under the same umbrella. I was convinced that in the holding company of Grupo Colpatria, legal, governance, non-financial risks and sustainability are not parallel conversations — they are the same conversation. During the last twelve months, three structural projects define this work. First, corporate simplification: we reduced the Group’s structure from 40 entities in 2020 to a projected 16 by 2026. The rationale was governance clarity: you cannot govern what you cannot see.

Second, the SIAR: our Integral System for Non-Financial Risk Management. We designed a methodology that maps and monitors 101 non-financial risks across the Group, with unified reporting directly to our committees and the Board of Directors. The motivation is rooted in a principle that has become a legal standard in leading jurisdictions: it is no longer sufficient for a board to show it did not know about a risk — it must demonstrate it built the systems to be able to know. The Interbolsa case in Colombia and the Blue Bell ruling from the Delaware Supreme Court illustrate this with force. The SIAR is our answer: 101 risks, integrated into the Group’s risk matrix, reported to the Risk and Audit Subcommittee and from there to the Board.

Third, the sustainability strategy — five pillars approved by the Board in July 2025 — and the 2025 Management and Sustainability Report, prepared under GRI 2021, SASB, and the Global Compact, with external assurance by BDO. The assurance is not an image exercise: it is the mechanism that makes the governance architecture verifiable by third parties.

The full account of these initiatives is available in the Grupo Colpatria 2025 Management and Sustainability Report at grupocolpatria.com. The ambition running through all three: to transform the holding from a financial statement receiver into an active, preventive participant in risk and value creation across its investments. This transformation belongs to the whole team at Grupo Colpatria, who work alongside and make changes possible.

How has the role of general counsel evolved, and what are the most important attributes for the modern in-house lawyer?

The GC’s role has undergone a structural shift. A decade ago, the benchmark was legal excellence: technical accuracy and transactional execution. That remains necessary — but in my opinion it is no longer sufficient.

The most effective general counsels today are business partners who sit at the decision-making table to help shape strategy, not just to flag risk. The shift is from “what are the legal implications?” to “what decision should we make, and what does the governance framework tell us about how?”. The attributes I consider most important: genuine business judgment, the ability to communicate persuasively to a board, intellectual honesty — the courage to say what the business may not want to hear — and a commitment to building strong internal capability, in close collaboration with external advisors who bring real specialisation where it matters most. In my opinion, above all, the modern GC’s role is not to prevent the business from taking risks. It is to ensure the business takes risks it understands, with eyes open.

How can in-house counsel use AI to improve efficiency while maintaining quality, governance and integrity within legal teams?

I am genuinely enthusiastic about AI’s potential — and equally clear-eyed about its limits. The question is not whether to adopt it, but how to do so intelligently.

We are exploring AI for contract analysis, template automatisation, regulatory monitoring and drafting — tasks that are time-consuming but do not require the nuanced judgment that defines a senior lawyer’s value. The efficiency and productivity gains are real. But they only matter if they free up time for the work that requires human judgment, such as strategic advice, complex negotiation and board-level guidance. The lawyers who will be most valuable in five years are not those who use AI least, nor those who use it uncritically — but those with the critical thinking to know what to trust, what to verify, and what to push back on. That standard applies equally to in-house teams and law firms.