About

Before joining Zurich, Jim Harper worked in private practice in London spending over eight years with Lovells working on corporate, private equity, M&A, commercial and corporate finance transactions. During this time he was seconded to the in-house legal teams at Merck and Ford Motor Company handling a wide range of corporate and commercial matters for the companies. Harper has been with Zurich since November 2008 and has previously featured in the GC Powerlist: Ireland. During this time he’s had a number of varying roles and responsibilities within the Irish and EMEA legal teams including leading the pan-European legal team responsible for transferring Zurich’s European non-life insurance business to an Irish based Zurich carrier. Harper has headed the Irish corporate and M&A law team responsible for a wide variety of transactions, corporate governance and regulatory matters. He headed up Zurich’s European legal board for approximately. two years which involved managing a network of senior lawyers throughout the EMEA region and acted as general counsel Ireland for approximately 18 months. Harper is currently a senior legal counsel for Zurich Ireland specialising in corporate transactions, projects, reorganisations and a variety of corporate governance, regulatory and related advice. He is also company secretary for Zurich’s pan European insurer which has its head office in Dublin and has 12 branches in the EEA, holding this position for over five years. Harper highlights that, ‘acting as company secretary to the board of Zurich’s primary European non-life carrier has given me a seat at the boardroom table. This role has given me great insight into the role and expectations of a senior board as well as an opportunity to contribute, provide advice and present to the board on a variety of topics. It has also given me a unique insight into the key commercial drivers, risks and offered a top-down view of the company’s operations’. Throughout his time with Zurich, Harper has sought to develop frameworks, approaches or documents to enhance the workings of the legal department and create efficiencies for the future when similar issues or repeat procedures are required. He says that, ‘this ensures a consistent approach can be achieved in a more efficient manner, and thus enables more efficient use of resource. Trying to upskill and develop team members also improves the knowledge of the team more broadly, ensures people perform to the best of their ability and minimises key-person dependency’. Examples of this include: the instigation of a legal and regulatory development group to oversee and assist the business with the ongoing identification of new legislative developments to ensure the Zurich business is well prepared to respond to the ever changing regulatory landscape; and the implementation of processes to provide assurance to directors and senior management with regard to legislative compliance.