About

Led by María Cristina Vilá de van Hoorde – who proudly describes the bank as ‘the second-largest in Panama’ – the 22-member Banistmo legal team is responsible not only for the legal requirements of the bank itself, but also ‘all of its subsidiaries, including a brokerage house, a leasing company, a fiduciary company and a finance company among others’. Describing how the team’s role has changed following the bank being taken over by Bancolombia in 2013, Vilá says, ‘following the acquisition, we evolved from an operational and support role to a strategic and advisory role. The lawyers of the team now work closely with the business team to define strategy, develop products and services, design and structure transactions and advice on all relevant matters’. The team has also supported some of the biggest corporate finance and M&A deals in Panama in the last couple of years. Alongside this expansion in the team’s day-to-day responsibilities, developing and deploying new systems aimed at providing a superior customer experience as well as operational and technological excellence, ‘the legal team has played a critical role to develop, launch and obtain all the regulatory approvals for the implementation in Panama of NEQUI, a digital platform developed by our headquarters (Bancolombia) that was implemented in Panama in 2016, becoming the first fintech digital platform implemented within the country by a banking institution’, Vilá explains. ‘Its implementation in Panama involved several legal challenges (as existing regulation is limited in the country), so the legal team worked closely with regulators in the development and implementation of existing regulations to support the initiative. NEQUI continues to evolve and legal team continues to be critical for that process, and the platform was recently awarded second place in the 2017 technological innovations category by the Federación Latinoamericana de Bancos (FELABAN)’, she adds.