Team size: 18
  

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

Our number one priority this year is the preparation for MiCAR, the new EU-wide regulatory framework for crypto-asset service providers. We have already used the economically challenging times in 2022 and 2023 to further foster regulatory compliance within the Bitpanda Group, so it is only logical that our next huge goal with multiple ongoing projects is now to secure ourselves a MiCAR licence to further enhance our position in Europe. Considering the complexity of MiCAR, this involves not only all expert areas in the legal and regulatory department but also all departments across the organisation.

Our continuous efforts to be the most secure and compliant player in crypto in Europe and our constant endeavours to enhance our products and services have also enabled us to close a multi-annual sponsorship deal with FC Bayern Munich, which was announced publicly in January 2024. The partnership has enabled us to further build out our community, both with users and partners.

Bitpanda is also working on new web3 product innovations with our Pantos team, and we have exciting releases planned for 2024.

With Bitpanda Technology Solutions we offer a full White-Label/SaaS solution to give fintechs and financial institutions the opportunity to offer digital assets to their customers. In January 2024, we managed to score another huge win by enabling Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien to be the first traditional bank in Europe to offer crypto-assets to their customers via our technical interface, and we have many more similar deals in the pipeline.

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

Our legal and regulatory strategy largely goes hand in hand with the strategy of the Bitpanda Group. The crypto and fintech space is known to be prone to uncertainty and volatility of markets, but Bitpanda certainly has a proven track record for coming out stronger. Even following bad market conditions in 2022/2023 (Crypto Winter) Bitpanda managed to be profitable and to further expand its services.  

A close relationship with our C-suite has proven pivotal to ensure the business strategy can be supported by the legal function and to derive also our legal strategy. Over the years, we have made sure to regularly (at least quarterly) adapt our legal and regulatory strategy to ensure proper allocation of resources within our rather lean function. While delivering on what is necessary for the business, we always make time to improve efficiency via legal tech (and AI applications), come together for workshops, or enjoy ourselves at a team reunion with colleagues from all over Europe.

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

The space the Bitpanda Group is operating in, and the constant changes to the legal and regulatory environment require especially our legal function to be agile and quick to jump to the right action in a coordinated manner at all times.  

One tool that has helped streamline legal requests tremendously is Jira, which is especially useful in regard to case management and interacting with different functions. Our extensive documentation efforts on Confluence, which we use not only for tracking of projects, but also to make policies and guidance available – in written form and graphically, go hand in hand with that.  

For the drafting of legal documents and letters, we rely hugely on our shared template and clause library and have incorporated the Enterprise version of ChatGPT into our daily work to further enhance our efforts and increase efficiency. The same goes for DeepL Pro, since we have a multilingual user community to service. On top of that, thanks to the efforts of our procurement team, our meticulous and robust legal spend tracker as well as reviewing new vendors data protection and legal set-up has been further upgraded by integrating vendor onboarding due diligence, our E-signature tool DocuSign and our billing system within one powerful intake-to-pay solution, Zip.