Legal affairs director and head of compliance | Mapfre Turkey Companies
Merve Öney Barlas
Legal affairs director and head of compliance | Mapfre Turkey Companies
Chief legal officer and member of the executive committee | DGPays
One of the most important projects of the last two years have been the outsourcing of our case files to external law firm instead of only following them up internally. Insurance companies carry out huge operations and have burdensome litigation works. For instance, in mid-2018, we had around 5,500 pending bodily injury cases, and based on legal requirements we are liable to allocate reserves for each and every lawsuit filed against our company. Therefore, we have developed a project in order to settle on the pending case files with the purpose of closing them in a shorter time with smaller amount of accrued reserves. The project has been very successful; from June 2018 we have closed around 1300 case files and made a saving of TL 40,000,000 roughly.
Another important project has been the implementation of the data protection legislation compliance throughout Mapfre Turkey Companies. Insurance companies have many diverse operations running together, making the implementation of the data protection project harder compared to companies with smaller operations. However, the project has been extremely successful despite its complications.
As an in-house lawyer working for a foreign multinational in Turkey’s insurance sector, I would like to mention that certain challenges we face directly relate to the characteristics of our country. The following may be cited as the weaknesses and threats concerning Turkey and its economic, political and social environment: Inflation progressing on a rising trend; the perception of political interventions in central bank decisions; substantial external debt in private sector denominated in foreign exchange; an increase in the cost of borrowing; unsettled political conditions; and volatile and worsening macro-economic indicators.
The above concerns the majority of industries in Turkey, but some weaknesses and threats are specific to the insurance sector. Government intervention in policy pricing, the cancellation of big insurance industry projects, increasing collection risk and frequent changes in legislation and judicial systems are all examples of issues which affect us directly.
Each threat or weakness cited above directly affects the daily business routine of the legal department, as every challenge faced by business units is addressed and directed to the Legal Department to seek consultancy as to how to proceed moving forward.
The legal department of Mapfre Turkey Companies’ team culture is to focus on working constantly to improve our legal services and develop the best relationship with our business units, distributors, suppliers, shareholders and society at large that we can. In order to create this, we believe that a team fully committed to understanding the needs of the business in a complete and accurate manner, and to rendering legal services of perfect quality is a must. In addition to this, continuous development and training should be undertaken for the enhancement of the team’s capabilities and skills. On top of this, innovation, the automation of legal operations and a commitment to social responsibility, leadership and corporate ethics are of extreme importance.
Firstly, I believe that the best way to get more women into in-house legal leadership positions is to enhance the quality of opportunities granted to them. It should first start by implementing a hiring policy without any gender-based distinctions and then respecting this at every stage of their employment. The company should be inclusive to all employees- not only to in-house legal leadership positions- by promoting diversity and making use of the strengths of having diverse profiles in the organisation.
Also, speaking with figures, with respect to the equality policies, at the end of the year 2018, 41 percent of positions of responsibility at Mapfre worldwide were occupied by women, exceeding our target commitment of 40 percent for that past year.
The economic and social environment in today’s world is undergoing massive changes with the progress of the quality of knowledge and the way we process this knowledge. The world is in a digital revolution that affects every aspect of business across all industries. As a natural outcome of this new digital era, companies need to devote their resources to investing in technology while carrying out their operations with help from technological tools.
Companies have started to base their business model and some of their KPIs in line with the digital revolution. Digital challenges, which require investing and allocating resources on technological developments and making the technology as a part of the routine of their business operations, have begun to receive attention. Through the digital challenge, companies are at the stage of adopting new behaviours and new ways of working that will allow them to adapt to new digital requirements.
In Mapfre Turkey companies, we also strongly believe in sustainable and continuous renovation and digitalisation. We profit from an AI platform that enables Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in relevant business units. The RPA in place not only shortens the duration of operational activities and simplifies their implementation but also allows complicated queries to be resolved, bringing out correlations that may be very hard for traditional workforces to find and match.
As one of our main targets as Mapfre worldwide, we aim to launch new self-directed digital capabilities and to boost robo-transactions. Regarding technology, over the next three years we will progress toward more open, analytical, flexible and global technology that is easily scalable within different business units’ operations.
We aim to grow our digital business premiums thanks to actions such as optimising investment in digital marketing, improving dynamic positioning in comparison engines, and implementing new online quote generators and recruiters. In addition, we aim to develop sophisticated price optimisation techniques to attract the most profitable risks and retain more clients. Continuing our digital transformation to improve operational efficiency and the client experience is a major strategic objective for Mapfre worldwide.
In addition to the investment in digital business, resources are also devoted to recruiting digital talent and fostering a digital culture in the business. The purpose is to continue developing technical, digital and transformational skills of all MAPFRE employees. The Digital Challenge initiative is driving knowledge management, collaborative and flexible work, and the use of agile work methodologies among employees.
