About

General Motors Financial is the financial services arm of the global automobile manufacturer General Motors. GM Financial provides auto finance across the world, with operations in the US, Canada, Europe, China and Latin America. The company’s operations in Latin America are growing, and Colombia has become an important hub for these activities. Carlos Laguado, director of legal operations for Chile and Colombia, works within a global legal team that is innovative and unique in its structure. Laguado explains that a team of ‘over 20 lawyers, some for operational (legal) day-to-day duties in Colombia and Peru, others for the worldwide coordination and advice for the global compliance projects and matters. The staff worldwide works as one team – beyond frontiers. We are going further than the boiler plate language you see in literature and we made it a reality. In parallel, lawyers in Colombia provide assistance for say Peru and Chile. As an example last week I provided advice for a money laundering issue in Serbia and Germany’. The legal team’s matrix structure has allowed the Colombian legal team of nine at GM Financial to become integrated into business decisions on a global scale, undoubtedly improving its standing within the company as a whole. The connectivity of legal teams will prove to be a strong asset during the ongoing sale of General Motor’s European business to French PSA Group. This transaction, worth an estimated US$2.3bn, will include the financial operations in Europe, and the GM Financial team will have an important supporting role to play. Referring to innovations specific to Colombia, Laguado draws attention to the legal team’s ‘initiative to create a customer claim center (CCC), responsible for the entire administration of any claim against the business, including constitutional fast track actions (tutelas), consumer direct claim, consumer ombudsman claims, claims with the regulators and requests of the judiciary’. This initiative has produced metrics and standardised processes that have generated ‘massive’ savings in legal fees and have increased customer satisfaction.