About

Since being featured in the inaugural GC Powerlist: Chile 2017, Felipe Bunster Echenique has demonstrated not only expert legal skills but also a high level of business acumen at Mutual de Seguridad, the large Chilean insurance institution. This is reflected in him being promoted to the position of CEO of the company, a rare achievement seen in the legal world. Going some way to explain how he achieved the feat, Bunster can boast a number of successes during his time as general counsel of the company. These include transforming the legal function into a trusted business partner and the best team to work for in the company as evidenced by a 2018 internal index. Bunster goes as far as saying that this ‘was a personal and professional challenge that probably allowed to me to become the CEO’. As part of this change in the department, he developed “business partners” within Mutual that would spend ‘four hours per day just talking and visiting areas or departments that request frequent legal advice’, he explains, adding ‘that this gave us a very good day-to-day communication with the different needs and problems of the different departments’. Bunster also arranged a contract with Microsoft which saw the IT giant become the IT partner of Mutual and develop software, with a very easy-to-use dashboard, which significantly improves the times that the legal team resolves a query as well as a reduction in the number of queries asked. Bunster believes this in particular has allowed Mutual to be ‘a fully digitalised company’. In addition to these internal changes, Bunster has also impressed for his involvement on a important and successful regulatory claim before the Contraloria General de la Republica as well as another important trial which saw Mutual collect almost US$8m.