Team Size: Four 

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have recently been involved in?  

Since launching a little over a year ago, we have worked on several tech-related agreements critical to building the Bank’s platform and launching its services. We have likewise been involved in deals with significant partners in the financial industry aimed at providing banking and financial services to unbanked and underbanked individuals, which is a primary objective for the Bank and essential to achieving financial inclusion for Filipinos. 

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in the Philippines over the next five-ten years? 

The increasing complexity in the legal and regulatory environment has pushed the role of the general counsel to become less confined to the traditional legal risk management to becoming more entwined with the different aspects of the business. Developments in technology, issues on sustainability and corporate social responsibility, implications of the Covid-19 pandemic, large-scale cybersecurity attacks, are just some of the recent developments that emphasize the need for agility and a more comprehensive approach to legal risk management. 

The foregoing have and will continue to influence the evolution of the role of the general counsel from being simply a legal risk manager to becoming a strategic partner of the business. Bringing in the general counsel’s involvement at the outset brings in a different perspective to structuring the business’ deals and minimises exposure to different potential risks as the deal progresses until it is launched and implemented. 

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have recently been involved in? (Please mark anything confidential clearly, and feel free to speak in general terms if you wish, we are just trying to describe the sort of work you have been engaged with over the past year)  

I have just recently moved to my current company, FPG Insurance Co., Inc., and one area I am focusing on is the further improvement of current processes on legal, risk and compliance support for the Company. The processes have to be built for scale so the legal risk and compliance functions remain to be truly enabling functions. At the same time, as we operate within a regulated space, the processes have to be designed in such a way that all identified legal and compliance risk exposures are effectively and efficiently eliminated or otherwise addressed.