Bener Law Office

Insurance Compliance Data ProtectionCorporate Law

Partner

Oya Özarslan is a partner leading the insurance and compliance teams and advising Turkish and multinational clients mainly on insurance law, compliance and data privacy.

On compliance practice, she is a well-known anticorruption, anti-money laundering, fraud, ethics and corporate governance expert. She is certified as Compliance professional (CCEP-I (Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional-International)) since 2015.

She is the Board member of Transparency International, global organization fighting against corruption and has been chair of the Board’s Ethics Committee thereof. She is the founding chair of Transparency International Turkey. She has also been Co-Chair of G-20 Governance Working Group.

She has been the country expert for and attended consultations for European Commission and European Parliament on anti-corruption and judiciary reforms, to UN on compliance of UNCAC Conventions, to OECD on country review reports of Convention of Foreign Bribery, to GRECO on anti-corruption reforms and to OSCE/EDHR on election financing & monitoring.

She served to government offices for a number of projects, i.e., “Strengthening Anti-Corruption Policies & Practices” as well as “Developing Ethical Awareness and Rules for Public Officials of Municipalities”. She also served to a university for creation of cluster for autonomous vehicle, artificial intelligence and ethical standards thereof.

On insurance practice, before joining Bener, she has worked on a global leading insurance company as a head of legal at local and regional levels ad about ten years focusing on domestic and international aspects of general insurance business. She was instrumental on licensing, product designing and relations with regulators. She worked on a number of banc assurance agreements and designed the relations with agencies and brokers as well as working on various business partners. She leads the M&A and restructuring deals at a regional level and managed legal insurance operations in 22 countries.

She has been involved in a number of significant cases for many high profile clients. She has also led several due diligences/audits and full insurance compliances projects for multinational and local clients. 

She regularly publishes articles/newsletters on insurance and compliance matters in various publications.

She has the following publications:

- Author of Report on “Corruption Prone Areas”, 2016

- Author of Manual for Anti-Corruption Programme in Business Sector, 2016

- Editor of Business Integrity Country Agenda Report, 2016

- Editor of National Integrity Systems Report, 2016

- Editor of Political Financing and Transparency Report, 2015

- Co-Author of Monitoring Report for UNCAC Anti-Corruption Country Review, 2015

- Co-Author of the Report of “Corruption in Turkey: Where, Why and How?”, 2015

- Author of an Article “G20 and the Uncomfortable Truth: Corruption” Perspective Periodical, 2014

- Author of an Article “Lessons from the Election: Low Levels of Transparency Raise Red Flags in Turkey”, 2014.]

English, Turkish

New York Bar Association

Istanbul Bar Association

Ankara University Law School, BA, 1987 University of Texas at Austin, School of Law; 1998