About

As the current general counsel and company secretary of life insurance business AXA Life Invest, Alan Boland is part of the senior leadership team reporting to the CEO of the company in a ‘very effective’ relationship where there is a ‘common value to drive the business and an openness to challenge one another’. Operating with a ‘commercial and pragmatic’ mind-set, Boland is a keen innovator with regards to the risk management of the business, along with his team Boland launched a ‘regulatory watch’ process whereby the legal function identifies and analyses new developments and ensure they are appropriately delegated through-out the business. Currently involved the transfer of one of the company’s books of business, this has required multiple applications being filed with courts and regulators in a number of jurisdictions. It has also involved providing instructions to and managing the input of external counsel in those jurisdictions. Stating that the ‘approach to regulating in Ireland changed dramatically between 2005 and 2011’, the pace of this change forced Boland to ‘be ahead of the game’ in the industry, and combined with the ‘extremely complex and sensitive’ process of closing products to new business in 2016 show examples of foresight and seamlessness. Boland has spent over seven years at AXA after spending almost a decade at Irish law firm William Fry where he presided over corporate and regulatory insurance advice and transactions.