About

After training and launching her career in the corporate department of A&L Goodbody, Nicola O’Connell spent five years at eircom, now called eir, as in-house counsel and a member of its corporate strategy team. As such she was closely involved in all of eircom’s significant activity during her time there, including its IPO of eircom shares and the sale of eircom’s mobile arm (Eircell) to Vodafone. She left eircom to join Nexgen Capital, a boutique investment firm, as in-house counsel and compliance officer and, in 2011, was appointed managing director of the Nexgen group’s business in Ireland. She has been general counsel of the Zurich Insurance Group in Ireland since September, 2015. Her current role with Zurich has given her the responsibility for leading the largest in-house legal team in her career to date. O’Connell’s focus has been on empowering the individual professional performance of each member of the team. She has encouraged a flexible and collaborative approach to the way in which it provides legal support to the business and to each other, so that component parts of the business are not exclusively dependent on any one individual. She says that, ‘in this way additional support can be deployed quickly and effectively when and where required, and individual team members are continually learning. Feedback from the business on the reliability and performance of the team and its individual members is universally positive’. Recently, Zurich has put in place a composite management team in Ireland over the past three years, with responsibility for managing both Zurich’s life and non-life insurance businesses. As a shared service function already providing support across both businesses, in addition to Zurich’s treasury, investments and other activities in Ireland, the Zurich Ireland legal team was uniquely placed to support management in this innovative approach. O’Connell has been involved in guiding the business through the implementation of many new laws and regulations in the past three years, including the successful implementation of Solvency II and GDPR. In addition, with a very large UK branch, like many companies Zurich has had to consider in detail the implications of Brexit for the business and O’Connell has supported the development of robust contingency plans in the face of an ever evolving UK political landscape.