About

Favio Luciano Flores oversees the validation department at Grupo Financiero Ficohsa, Honduras’ top financial group. The department conducts legal and risk checks across the group, covering banking, credit and insurance. He oversees a team of nine lawyers and 37 other staff occupying a diverse range of roles. ‘It is a major challenge to operate such a multidisciplinary team’, says Flores, ‘particularly as when one thinks of the legal function one thinks only of lawyers. But this “challenge” can be very energising. To work with a team of people who engage different parts of your brain and push you to consider different ways of organising a department leads to new ways of acting and thinking’. Operating in a country where the banking sector is both hugely competitive and subject to political hurdles, Flores finds himself frequently involved in high-level discussions at the bank. He and his team also monitor the various bills that pass through Honduras’ National Congress on an almost daily basis. This, he says, helps him to anticipate change and keep the business appraised of any actions it may need to take. As part of his bid to create a world-class legal function, Flores has introduced a number of new performance measuring tools. ‘The aim is to promote a management model that mitigates legal risk and evaluates the possibilities for action. The cornerstone of [this model] is to have contact with our clients – internal or external – 100% of the time’, he says.