About

The in-house legal team at Willis Towers Watson in Colombia has, over the last two years, expertly managed the company’s merger and development in the Andean region with the final part this work to be completed by the end of 2019. The legal function at Willis Towers Watson is structured to be a support function for the business acting in an independent manner. For this reason, all colleagues that are part of legal belong to the office of the general counsel (OGC), which is a global office supporting the group on a global basis. Being assistant general counsel for Colombia, Peru and Venezuela as well as CRB co-lead for Latin America, Fabian Moreno is the appointed representative of OGC in those countries he serves. Also, lawyer Camila Portela has been included in the OGC structure as counsel in order to provide support to the mentioned operations with Moreno’s guidance and orientation. Additionally, in order to handle the very demanding anti-money laundering (AML) and environmental resources management (ERM) regulatory framework in Colombia, the local business unit has provided an engineering expert in the management of AML and SARO administrative systems and a paralegal supporting the local legal processes. The definition of the strategy and implementation of these processes are part of the legal support that is provided for Colombia. Moreno and Portela also provide assistance in wider matters pertaining to the whole of the Latin America region, such as regulatory obligations for the registration of offices before the different insurance regulators. The team has been responsible for implementing new processes, particularly in the AML area, and updating standards and templates to allow the company to work in more locations and expand across the region. Moreno identifies that, ‘in Colombia, AML regulation is very complex and demanding, especially in relation to the Know Your Client (KYC) procedures all supervised entities must have in place. For the last two years the local legal team, with the assistance of the IT department, has developed and implemented an online tool that allows for the collection of the KYC required information to be done directly by the client through a web portal. This is a development that puts Willis Towers Watson at the edge of the local industry, since most of our competitors are only starting to implement such tools. This online tool is live and operational’.