Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Corporate culture in Itaú is costumer centric, therefore we constantly seek to provide the best experiences for our clients. Within such framework, we recently adopted a legal design methodology for contracts related to products and services we offer massively to facilitate our clients’ comprehension. This has allowed us to have contracts with a less technical approach and a more friendly language to our clients in alignment with our costumer centric culture.

With this new methodology, we carried out various activities that gave us a different perspective, such activities included, among others, interviewing our clients and adding their suggestions to our contracts. Those activities also resulted in an effort from the legal team to improve our communication skills and acquire awareness of the importance of communicating in a brief and simpler form avoiding technical language that can confuse our clients.

On the other hand, with the digital transformation within the financial industry, our legal team has adopted a digital culture, using more agile and innovative methodologies in our daily activities.

Finally, other of our key objectives which is always present in the legal team, has been to hire and retain the best talent to guarantee the excellence of the legal service we provide.

What are some of the main trends impacting the industry sector you work in in Colombia?

The financial industry is facing major challenges such as the digital transformation, which is requiring institutions to rethink their internal procedures to improve communication with its clients and their overall satisfaction.

Also, digital onboarding, cloud computing, machine learning and blockchain, among others, are now present in the commercial and support activities of financial institutions and in the regulators agendas.

Simultaneously, new relationships with providers are taking place based on technology, customer needs and market players, requiring high adaptability skills of the institutions in the context of innovation and disruption of the traditional business models.

In the case of Colombia, open finance and instant payments are examples of such new business scenarios allowing to amplify the portfolio of services and products and to offer more efficient procedures to the clients. This topics will have an interesting development with the advances of the regulatory agenda.

It is important to consider data treatment as a key pilar to the changes in the industry, requiring new risk management measures regarding data privacy and protection.