Team size: Over 100

What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

Over the past year, the Group Legal team has provided legal leadership on several strategically important matters across the Sanlam Group, many of which required complex structuring, regulatory navigation and multi-disciplinary coordination.

One of the most significant areas of work has been our support for high-value and cross-border transactions, including Project Sunshine, which involved Sanlam’s strategic partnership with Ninety-One; and the Group’s expanding digital financial services collaboration with TymeBank. These transactions have required extensive legal due diligence, negotiation of shareholder and governance rights, and careful alignment with regulatory requirements across several jurisdictions, including South Africa, India and Malaysia.

Group Legal has also been at the forefront of regulatory engagement on matters of strategic importance. This has included detailed submissions to the Prudential Authority and FSCA on issues such as Section 5(4) applications, approvals linked to significant transactions, and the legal framework underpinning Sanlam’s evolving distribution and digital strategies. These engagements have required deep legal analysis of prudential, conduct and financial sector laws, as well as close coordination with business and risk teams.

On the corporate governance side, the team has led significant legal work in support of the establishment of Sanlam Sisonke, which consolidates the Group’s national branch distribution model. This has required legal structuring, review of licensing considerations and the development of governance documents that ensure alignment with the Group’s strategic intent and regulatory obligations.

Group Legal has also managed several material contentious matters and regulatory reviews across the Group, working closely with external counsel where appropriate. This includes overseeing the resolution of complex disputes, guiding business units through regulatory inspections, and ensuring that Sanlam’s legal posture remains strong, consistent and defensible.

In addition, the team has contributed to the modernisation of the Group’s legal function, including the pilot of the Contract Lifecycle Management tool and the development of a consolidated Legal Knowledge Hub, which will enhance efficiency, document management and institutional memory across Sanlam.

Collectively, these initiatives demonstrate the breadth and depth of Group Legal’s legal work and highlight the strategic value of a well-integrated and forward-looking in-house legal team supporting a diversified financial services group.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Periods of instability demand a legal function that is clear-headed, proactive and deeply integrated into the organisation’s strategic decision making. My approach, together with the Group Legal is anchored in three principles: stability, clarity and foresight.

First, we establish rapid but disciplined governance. This includes activating focused legal workstreams, ensuring decision makers have immediate access to accurate legal assessments, and creating short feedback loops with executives and the Board. In crisis situations, ambiguity can be more damaging than the event itself, so our role is to bring legal clarity early.

Second, we prioritise regulatory and stakeholder confidence. We maintain open and transparent communication with regulators, proactively disclose material issues where appropriate, and ensure that the organisation continues to meet its statutory obligations even under pressure. Preserving trust is fundamental to resilience.

Third, we balance crisis response with forward-looking risk management. Group Legal conducts rapid impact assessments, identifies structural vulnerabilities and recommends legal safeguards to prevent recurrence. This may include strengthening contractual protections, tightening governance mechanisms or enhancing financial crime controls.

Ultimately, resilience is achieved not only by managing the crisis at hand, but by using it to reinforce the organisation’s legal and governance foundations for the future.

What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws?

Successful digital transformation in a legal department requires a balance between innovation, operational discipline and strict compliance with data protection laws. My approach within the Group Legal function is guided by four core strategies.

First, we follow a governance led digital roadmap. This ensures that every technology initiative, whether a contract management solution, an automation tool or a knowledge management platform, is designed from the start to meet legal, regulatory and security requirements. This helps us integrate privacy considerations into the foundation of each system.

Second, we apply privacy by design principles throughout all projects. This includes strong access controls, clear rules on data retention, encryption, data minimisation and careful consideration of any cross-border data flow. We work closely with data privacy specialists and technology teams to ensure alignment with the Protection of Personal Information Act.

Third, we carry out comprehensive due diligence on all technology partners. We assess not only the product features but also the supplier’s security practices, data governance, operational resilience and contractual obligations. This reduces risk and ensures that our vendors support our compliance commitments.

Finally, we give significant attention to change management. We equip our teams with the training and guidance needed to use digital tools responsibly, consistently and within the requirements of our governance frameworks.

Through these strategies, the team delivers meaningful digital progress while maintaining full compliance with data protection laws and regulatory expectations.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Several trends have become increasingly important over the past year, and I believe in house lawyers should be attentive to them as they reshape both legal practice and business decision making.

The first is the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in financial services and the significant conduct and operational risks that accompany it. As digital interactions scale, the sophistication of financial crime and fraud is increasing. Legal teams need a deeper understanding of technology, data governance and model accountability to support responsible innovation and protect clients and the organisation.

The second trend is the growing intensity of regulatory scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions. Regulators are paying closer attention to ownership structures, beneficial ownership transparency, cross border arrangements and group wide governance expectations. In house teams must anticipate regulatory concerns early and ensure that strategic transactions and business models are designed with compliance in mind from the outset.

A third emerging trend is the strengthening of stakeholder expectations regarding corporate culture and ethical leadership. Issues such as data privacy, fair treatment of clients and transparent governance are becoming central to long term trust. Legal functions play an important role in shaping these behaviours and guiding organisations toward sustainable practices.

These trends require in house teams to combine strong legal foundations with strategic insight and a forward-looking mindset.

Which law firms are you regularly instructing?

We regularly work with several leading South African and international law firms, selected based on their expertise, sector experience and ability to support complex multi-jurisdictional matters. In South Africa, we frequently instruct firms such as Bowmans, Webber Wentzel, ENS, Werksmans and Norton Rose Fulbright. For cross border transactions and regulatory matters, we engage firms with strong regional capabilities, including Khaitan and Co in India and selected firms in Malaysia and other African markets.

These relationships are managed through a disciplined panel approach that ensures quality, consistency and value across the Sanlam Group.