What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in? 

Our legal team has been actively involved in major loan transactions, particularly those that are non-standard in nature and feature atypical structures, regardless of the credit mechanisms or related guarantees employed, along with substantial loan amounts. Our responsibilities include preparing and reviewing loan agreements and other guarantee documents, which necessitates close collaboration with legal advisors from other participating banks as well as our clients. These transactions primarily consist of two categories: first, syndicated loans aimed at infrastructure, real estate, and corporate projects; and second, loans intended for financing public entities to support productive public investment projects, which are secured by federal participations (long-term credits) and also include unsecured credits (short-term credits). We cater to clients from all regions of the country.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Given the increase in financing requests involving trusts as borrowers or guarantors, including those from financial institutions in the non-banking sector (multi-purpose financial companies and financial leasing companies) in 2023, we moved away from a case-by-case review model to determine if these transactions are legally acceptable for the bank. Instead, we adopted the master trust model proposed by these clients. This approach avoids the need to establish an exclusive payment trust for each lender.

Furthermore, to expedite the service provided to borrowers, we requested that the internal credit analysis departments allow us to review cases before they are scheduled for authorisation by the internal committee. This measure enables us to conduct a documentary review, which is then delivered to the members of the internal committee, providing them with better information to approve or reject our clients’ financing requests.

This action prevents operational areas from needing to reprocess tasks, such as presenting the case to the internal committee more than once. In the event of approval, it facilitates the closing and execution of the credit operation and its guarantees, maintaining legal certainty for both our client and us as a bank.

What is a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?

We listen to and understand the needs of our customers, particularly regarding their operations when executing non-standard credit transactions. We focus on being accurate and precise in defining the legal structure of the operation while ensuring the legal security of our bank. We believe that personalised attention to our external clients (borrowers) and our internal clients (customer service areas and other internal departments of our bank) is our best competitive advantage, and we highly value it.