Team size:  80

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?

As the APAC General Counsel for Natixis, I am responsible for managing the legal and compliance risks generated by our multiple business lines across Asia Pacific. I try to be both proactive and strategic, emphasising the necessity of a robust risk assessment framework that both identifies existing risks and tries to identify key emerging risks. I then help the senior management to align our strategic and business objectives with these risks to ensure organisational resilience. Given the complexity of navigating multiple jurisdictions and diverse regulatory frameworks across the APAC region, close collaboration with the business lines is essential for early detection of potential legal and compliance risks. This approach safeguards compliance with local laws and regulations while preparing us for any potential litigation or regulatory scrutiny, enabling us to navigate challenges as effectively as we can without compromising our strategic goals.

How do you balance being a legal risk manager with being a strategic business enabler, and where do you see the biggest tensions?

Balancing the roles of legal and compliance risk manager and strategic business enabler is a critical yet complex aspect of my role. As the bank explores new products in new jurisdictions with new client types, I advocate for a collaborative mindset, where legal insights are integrated into the decision-making process from the outset. This allows us to explore solutions that align with business growth, while ensuring effective legal risk management, and to foster a culture of shared responsibility and ownership. However, it is also important to stress that a shared responsibility and ownership require a culture of accountability and an understanding of non-financial risk in the business lines.

In the face of increasing regulation and scrutiny, what are the biggest compliance challenges keeping GCs up at night?

Since the collapse of Lehman Brother and the ensuing global financial crisis, the intensity of regulatory scrutiny has been unprecedented. This rapid pace of regulatory change has been felt in Asia and has combined with the intricacies of cross-border compliance across the diverse APAC landscape. The diversity of regulators and varying political and economic policy focus areas across jurisdictions present significant challenges that can complicate our operations. Key areas such as cybersecurity, data privacy, sanctions and financial crime, require vigilant monitoring and swift adaptation to ensure we remain compliant. To meet these challenges effectively, we need to constantly update our understanding of the technology available to those groups that seek to undermine our compliance with relevant laws but also the technology available to us to detect and prevent any such breaches. This is an ever-increasing cost for the business lines to bear and must always be a joint decision based on a robust risk-assessment process.

We can have the best processes and risk management framework in place for managing legal and regulatory risk, but this will not protect the company unless underpinned by a strong compliance culture. People make decisions and they need to make those decisions with an appropriate sense of what is right and wrong, especially in crisis or high-pressure situations. The legal and compliance teams are critical to fostering this cultural foundation and, in doing so, reinforce the trust and integrity of our operations in APAC.

Ultimately, my role as APAC General Counsel extends beyond merely ensuring compliance; it encompasses fostering an environment where the legal and compliance teams perceived as a vital business partner. By proactively addressing these challenges and aligning our legal strategies with our organisational objectives, we can effectively navigate the complexities of the regulatory landscape while driving sustainable growth, thereby positioning our organisation for long-term success and resilience in an ever-evolving world.