Team size: 42

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

The last year has been complex on different fronts due to the situation in Peru, which has impacted the business, and particularly the roles of the compliance and legal departments.

In the last year there were two main challenges, the execution of which was led by the vice-presidency I hold. The first challenge was the restructuring of the bank’s bonds, which included the issuance of corporate bonds to be placed in the market for 300-million soles and the assignment of subordinated bonds to a third company. These operations had financial and regulatory implications for both the securities market and the financial system, requiring authorisations from both regulators, which were successfully achieved.

The second challenge was the divestment of two of the group’s businesses, one of them the closure of a company in the financial system which involved regulatory aspects with the superintendency of banking, tax, corporate, labour and other fronts, and the exit of an operating business, which even involved an incentive programme for the reduction of staff.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

The pandemic brought with it important advances in terms of technological tools that contribute significantly to the role of legal areas. The use of platforms such as Dilitrust, whether in its contract management, governance, document management or litigation management modules, PandaDoc, DocuSing CLM, or access to local or international regulatory bases, became widespread. Nowadays, technological tools to support the legal area have ceased to be convenient and have become necessary, and I believe that in the future the developers of these types of tools will continue to improve them and create new ones – possibly tools that are very focused on digital contracting.

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

An unfortunate constant in the countries of the region is the existence of institutions and regulators that have been establishing policies that are often far removed from the technical aspects of each industry, and Peru is no stranger to this. One of my main concerns when working in a regulated industry from a banking, consumer and labour perspective, among others, is that companies are more frequently faced with populist-oriented regulations that threaten contractual freedoms and the ordinary development of business. In relation to this concern, I accepted the role of vice-president of the regulatory management committee at Asbanc, the Peruvian financial institutions association, whose functions are in part to warn about the negative effects of this type of legislative initiatives on the industry as well as on the customers.