About

Daniel Pérez currently oversees a team of 90 employees in his role as general counsel at BAC Credomatic, the leading Central American financial institution, and coordinates internal and external legal teams across Central America, Mexico, USA and the Caribbean. The team managed by Pérez currently ensures full compliance with laws and regulations across 11 jurisdictions. Since joining his current employer in June 2011, Pérez has introduced integrated management of legal risks by means of establishing guidelines, processes and tools. In addition, he has improved the efficiency of legal services that are outsourced to external law firms and has made an immense contribution to the standardisation and harmonisation of internal legal documentation throughout various jurisdictions. Perhaps one of the most important impacts that Pérez has had is the strengthening of relationships with more than 50 regulators; something that is incredibly important in the financial sector today. Joining the company shortly after its acquisition by Grupo Aval, Pérez managed to integrate the separate legal functions and individual lawyers across the various group companies into one internal regional legal department, which has a uniform culture and a standard approach to management of legal risk. ‘From the very beginning our goal has been to make legal areas act in an uniform fashion and follow global best practices in order to achieve maximum efficiency, and be perceived as a strategic partner by the rest of the business’, Pérez asserts. Over the course of his career, Pérez has grown to be recognised across Central America for his successful participation in various M&A processes, the successful launch of new products and the implementation of innovative structures for long-term funding. Pérez considers winning the confidence of his CEO and senior management, as well as regional integration of the legal team, as the greatest achievements of his professional career. He says: ‘It was not easy to take on the challenge of creating and leading a regional legal function as big, as complex and as significant’. Pérez’s previous experience includes working as a partner at Costa Rican law firm LatamLex Abogados, coordinating litigation and structured finance related work for clients, and teaching banking and private equity law at the University of Costa Rica.