About

Pita Williams started her legal career as an intellectual property lawyer before moving in-house to a large financial services organisation, learning the ropes carefully but quickly. The opportunity to work at QBE and lead the legal function for the then QBE-Mercantile Mutual joint venture came about originally as a short-term arrangement at the start of the transition to the Financial Services Reform regime.

She came for three months and has been there 15 years. When QBE took over Mercantile Mutual, Williams became general counsel of the new combined Australian arm of QBE and since that time her career hasn’t been linear. It has, she says, ‘been primarily driven by my interests outside of the law, my desire to find out why things are the way they are, how they change and what I can do to bring about and influence change in a positive way’. Hence, she has had areas of responsibility broader than the central commercial legal function including financial crime, technical training and professional indemnity claims as a result. This allowed her to have a broad knowledge of the industry and the business, other than just coming from a legal perspective. She has enjoyed being able to work with areas other than legal, and to be involved in the business, making and influencing decisions. She identifies that it is ‘a distinct advantage of being in-house is that you get to see the whole story, beginning to end. More than that, you get to be a part of it and drive and influence it’. In this vein, one of the recent highlights of her work at QBE has been the formation of QBEs shared services centre in the Philippines. The complexity of QBE’s business at the time meant that she had to utilise all of her knowledge and experience, and also draw upon those of others in the project team. As a leader in a senior role, and having been in this role for some time, she sees her role as being more as a mentor and guide than it is to complete a transaction or lead a piece of litigation. She says that her goal is to ‘develop [team members] to become better lawyers than I am.

As a woman in a traditionally perceived as male profession (law) in a male industry (insurance) I remain conscious of the challenges faced by young women and by people who, for whatever reason, may not be typical of the profession or industry. I am committed to facing these challenges and ensuring that all people are fairly treated and given equal opportunity’. Demonstrating her ethical commitments further, she explains how she has also ‘mentored young women and actively participated in initiatives to support the LGBTI community, Indigenous Australians and charitable organisations’.