Team size: Five
Major legal advisers: Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose, Mathos Fhilo, Pérez-Llorca, Burges Salmon, and Altius.

What are the most significant cases or transactions you and your team have been involved in?

Our legal team has been involved in the reorganisation of the company, part of their functions leaving few countries: M&A transactions, closure of operations, distribution agreement, contracts for policy holders and employees. We are currently drafting distribution agreements for the market that the company decided to remain whilst handling few litigation and arbitration cases, and high-cost claims caused by the company’s business operations.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

Digitalisation will impact the role of in-house lawyers; it will transform the structure of the company and day-to-day operations. In this way, we will work more closely with business departments.

In a changing financial landscape, how does the company remain competitive against new phenomena such as fintech and blockchain, and how does the legal team assist with this?

Fintech is an opportunity; collaboration with fintech and start-up companies helped us to build the digital product portfolios, and this allowed our business to be up to date in the market. These new phenomena of digitalisation have developed faster than the action of regulators or markets, thus in-house lawyers are required to review the new phenomena and the relevant legal framework to ensure the company comply with the requirements.