About

General Motors Financial is the financial services arm of the global automobile manufacturer General Motors, providing automobile finance across the world with operations in the US, Canada, China, Indonesia, Australia and Latin America. The company’s operations in Latin America are growing, and Colombia has become an important hub for these activities. Carlos Laguado, global head of legal for compliance and general counsel for Colombia and Peru, works within a global legal team that is innovative and unique in its structure. Laguado explains that a team of over 10 lawyers, some for operational and day-to-day legal duties in Colombia and Peru and others for the worldwide coordination provide advice for the global compliance projects and matters. The staff worldwide works as one team – beyond frontiers. In parallel, lawyers in Colombia can provide assistance for other countries such as Peru or Australia. As an example, very recently the team provided global, consolidated advice for a project involving credit financial regulation of Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The legal team’s matrix structure has allowed local legal teams at GMF, like the Colombian legal team, to become integrated into business decisions on a global scale, undoubtedly improving its standing within the company as a whole. Referring to innovations specific to Colombia, Laguado draws attention to the legal team’s ‘initiative to draft first versions of future smart contracts that are embedded in the middle ware-core system of GMF and fed by commercial agents in the dealerships. That will allow the automatisation of mass loan documents production and an enhanced customer journey’. In terms of how the work is done, GMF Colombia utilises documented legal risk assessments templates to weigh in on complex legal decisions. Then, the attorneys are technically prepared to measure legal risks, legal control efficiency and determine the value or cost of residual legal risks. Worldwide and with the collaboration of the data privacy attorneys across GMF’s international operations, Laguado is creating global data privacy tools like data privacy agreements, cloud services contracts, guidelines for the processing of employee personal data and a framework for the sharing of customer data for marketing purposes, generating great efficiencies for his global internal clients and a reduction in the workload of the legal staff for compliance matters.