First, can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently?  

Addiko’s vision is to become the best specialist bank for consumers and SME in central South-Eastern Europe (Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro). Therefore, emphasising modern customer experience, an agile digitalisation strategy, and having a best-in-class legal team across the group is of eminent importance to consistently engage with IT related topics and contracts. Not to forget that countdown for the implementation of the Digitalisation Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which also requires intensive support from the legal teams. As a small sized banking group listed at the Vienna Stock Exchange, supervised by ECB and operating in both EU and non-EU countries, we have to deal with the same issues of large banks but with smaller teams. Because of the broad scope of legal topics and flat hierarchies, the seniority level of the legal teams across the group ensures comprehensive in-house advisory services. 

In the last years my legal team played a pivotal role in optimising and accelerating product processes as well supporting a recent expansion project to Romania. Moreover, we initiated an active litigation steering programme across the group, which showed especially in the last year success in resolving significant historic court cases. 

How does your legal strategy change during periods of instability or uncertainty?  

The legal team maintains a very close exchange of experiences and learnings with the legal experts in our subsidiaries, which in times of increased uncertainty is intensified to daily communication. In my view, particularly when different legal traditions converge, the initial step should always be to create a common understanding of the legal task.  This process is essential before conducting a legal risk assessment, processing, and finding of a legal solution. This fosters trust. While e-mails have their place, they are only suitable to a limited extent for capturing subtle nuances. Given my steering function, various strands of information come together for me. Especially in times of instability I prioritise steering the exchange of information, regularly probing the expectations of other stakeholders and supplementing any knowledge gaps with external expertise, when appropriate. Importantly, even in stressful times humour should never be forgotten. Laughter is a frequent occurrence in our meetings and serves as a valuable tool for channelling stress. 

Do you make use of any ‘legal tech’ products, and if so, for which areas of your job do you find it most useful?  

As this question does not refer to a specific legal tech definition, I highlight that on holding level we use a digital document management system, a legal database granting us an actual overview of court and misdemeanour cases across the group.