Team size: 21

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure organisational resilience?

Periods of instability and crisis require Internal Legal to act not only as a risk management function but also as a strategic business partner. Our approach is based on proactive risk assessment, close collaboration with key stakeholders, and agile decision-making.

First, we continuously identify and assess legal, regulatory, contractual, and litigation risks that may affect the Bank, its clients, or its portfolio. During a crisis, priorities can change rapidly, so legal support must be timely, practical, and focused on enabling informed business decisions while maintaining compliance and protecting the Bank’s interests.

Second, our Legal team works closely with Corporate Banking, Risk, Credit, Operations, as well as senior management, to ensure a coordinated response. Embedding Internal Legal in key business discussions allows potential legal issues to be identified early, solutions to be developed efficiently, and critical transactions to continue with appropriate safeguards in place.

Third, having foreseen the risks is most important, so we maintain a forward-looking perspective by monitoring regulatory developments, market and geopolitical trends, and emerging risks. This enables us to anticipate challenges, assess their potential impact, and support the development of contingency plans that strengthen business continuity and operational resilience.

Our legal strategy is closely aligned with the Bank’s broader business strategy. We seek to facilitate sustainable growth by providing clear and commercially aware legal guidance, supporting innovation and new business opportunities, ensuring sound governance, and safeguarding the Bank’s reputation. Rather than being a gatekeeper, Internal Legal tries to serve as an enabler that helps the business achieve its objectives within an appropriate legal and regulatory framework. Ultimately, organisational resilience is achieved, since we try to combine technical expertise, commercial understanding, and effective stakeholder engagement to help the Bank navigate uncertainty, respond decisively to challenges, and continue delivering value to clients and shareholders under all market conditions. Finally, instability and crises must not only be acknowledged in a pessimistic way, since they are also times of commercial opportunity and prevention (even enhancement) of the reputation of both corporate clients and the organisation. So, our legal team must also be creative and resourceful in this respect. This is all very much aligned with the values and the broader business strategy of the Bank, whereby the client should always be the centre of any activities and the Bank’s corporate purpose is ‘Prosperity Needs Pioneers’.

If you could change one thing about how businesses engage with their legal teams, what would it be and why?

Too often, legal teams are brought in when a transaction, product, or initiative is already well advanced and key commercial decisions have been made. At that stage, the legal function is frequently perceived as a reviewer or approver rather than a strategic partner.

When legal professionals are engaged early, they can help identify risks, structure solutions more effectively, and facilitate execution rather than simply react to issues that have already arisen. Early collaboration leads to better outcomes, reduces delays, and often creates opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked.

Businesspeople are sceptical that, for in-house lawyers, the goal is to say “no”; but this is not true – the goal of Internal Legal is to help the business achieve its objectives in a legally sound, responsible, and sustainable way. The most successful organisations recognise that legal expertise is most valuable when it is integrated into strategy, not added at the end of the process.

Ultimately, the relationship works best when legal and business teams view each other as partners with a shared objective: creating long-term value while protecting the organisation’s reputation, managing risk effectively, and maintaining the trust of clients, regulators, and stakeholders.