About

Led by group general counsel Lee Chin Tok, the CIMB Group legal team advises and assists the growth of the multi-faceted businesses of the Kuala Lumpur-based banking powerhouse. The Group is the fifth-largest financial institution in ASEAN by total assets as of 2017, and has roughly 38,000 staff globally servicing its diverse portfolio of products, investments and services. This provides a wealth of challenges for the 85 to 90-person regional legal team, as well as ample opportunities to showcase its strong capabilities. Chin Tok explains how the legal team is organised to achieve its goals: ‘There are two main legal teams, with both heads reporting to me as the group general counsel. One team covers the wholesale banking, group asset management and investment divisions, whilst the other team covers consumer and commercial banking and corporate affairs divisions’. He also goes into the team’s collaborative efforts in establishing new regional legal teams within Southeast Asia, stating that it had ‘significant involvement’ in the establishment of a new legal team in CIMB Vietnam, and will also be ‘setting up a new legal team in The Philippines’, helping the group to achieve a presence in all ten ASEAN countries. He also mentions that it has been heavily associated with CIMB’s “T18 Initiatives”, a transformational programme of strategic projects which involves partnerships with other companies including Ant Financial Group, China Galaxy and Sompo. It assisted with this expansion of the group’s digital capabilities and gained greater regulatory approval in support of this endeavour, as well as the establishment of a new FinTech team at the Group. In addition, internal improvements have been undertaken to improve internal cooperation with other divisions and the expansion of internal training and education services to include legal topics in the structured programs for business colleagues. Thus, the CIMB legal team has had an important impact on the group’s performance both internally and externally, proving itself as a versatile and capable partner for its business colleagues. It is able to support the group beyond strictly legal issues, on matters relating to business growth, institutional and process improvement, and staff development and progression.