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What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

When speaking about transactions I must start by saying that a key focus for ING at a global level is supporting the development of the circular economy. In Romania, the ING legal transactional team was very recently involved in the closing of the first syndicated loan for sustainable development , which – we hope – offers a starting point for a journey to large-scale financing of the local circular economy. ING Romania has coordinated a syndicate of four banks; ING Romania was also the documentation agent and co-mandated lead arranger with another important bank, while ING Bank London was the facility and security agent. Funds are destined for new investment and development projects as well. Our client is a very important player on the European market of treatment and recycling plastics, glass, electric and electronic equipments, lighting equipment waste. The company significantly contributes to accomplishment of the recycling targets in Romania for plastic and glass waste, and for electric and electronic waste. The new financing line supports the efforts to stimulate a sustainable economic model, assisting fighting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The last year was also a very intense one in the area of syndicated loans, ING was mandated lead arranger in two other recent major financing projects for investments; one for the only local telecom operator whose capital is wholly Romanian (it should be mentioned that the credit facility implementation term was extremely short, approximately two months!) and another one for a Swiss company involved in production and import export in the cereals and fertilisers field.

Besides such important transactions, I would also mention in June 2019 ING brought Apple Pay into Romania, which is now available to the clients of several banks and fintechs. Clients can make fast purchases in stores, in apps and on websites with Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad.

What changes have you made to the workings of the legal department during your time in your current role? How has that affected the wider company?

I haven’t really made any massive changes with regard to the structure of the legal department; nor have I embedded sophisticated technology in our workflows. I think though that what we have achieved together, as a team, is becoming strategic partners to our internal clients.

We have succeed doing that, for example, by setting KPIs for the legal teams and for every and each legal counsel in close collaboration with the business, according to ING’s strategy. We have also invested many resources to enable self-help for recurrent, operational legal matters, by having legal counsel in all teams conducting every year multiple sessions of trainings and workshops with our main clients, and by building an e-library with practical opinions, documentation and guidelines.

I would also mention the fact that especially in this last year we have embraced more and more the agile and flexible way of working, which, on one hand, proves to have a positive impact on our staff work satisfaction and, on the other hand, on their performance and efficiency. Moreover, since in agile way of working you get shorter time-to-market, we learnt to more easily adapt to changes and also focus on the core legal matters.

The quality of the legal staff, their dedication and earned professional experience, together with our constant (and almost obsessive) concern for efficiency led us into becoming, I dare to say, trusted personal advisors and strategists for business.

What are the most important legal and regulatory developments in Romania affecting your business at the moment?

Our primary concern in Romania in relation to legal and regulatory developments remains the lack of predictability and transparency of the legislative process. In support of law decision-making processes, real public consultations need to be conducted and impact studies carried out, before the finalisation of a proposal for a new law.

We confront, for example, a legislative gap related to digitalisation despite already applicable modern and technologically progressive eIDAS EU Regulation no. 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market. So we need to take care and mind that policies and legislation are sufficiently adaptive to respond to changes (technological, customers’ preferences etc).

Otherwise, in terms of highest impacting legislative events in the banking field and regulations, I would definitely mention Payment Services Directive II (PSD2), still to be implemented in national legislation until end of this year, and MiFID II which was transposed into Romanian legislation in June 2018. The impact of the law was significant, as the market architecture has been changed as well as the way transactions are carried out.

In the Bank, these new rules are translated into an implementation of various organisational processes and procedures, changes to IT systems, reviews and amendments of the contractual framework and development of the reporting of transactions to relevant authorities. There are also new requirements for credit institutions in relation to structured deposits trading and the distribution of fund units, which need to be complied with starting from next year.

How would you go about increasing the number of women in senior management positions?

Successful management involves balance and that includes also gender balance, equal opportunities should be provided for everyone in a company. Starting in July 2019, we have had the first woman CEO, my boss, Mihaela Bitu. This stands to reason that ING is taking equality seriously, and promotes equality in practice.

Do you currently use any legal tech products? If so, how do these assist you in your day-to-day work?

At ING Group level we are rolling out and implementing an internal AI supported platform that enables to improve control in ING’s adaptation to changes in regulations. The software provides insight in applicable regulations, supports document analysis, facilitates central project governance and communication, makes the link between regulations and policy development including an audit trail of all process steps. Its scope is bankwide, but started with legal and compliance teams.