Firstly, can you give us an idea of the type of work your team has done recently? 

My team supports the management and other areas of the bank in all legal matters, albeit in the traditional back-office legal role. We are currently in the initial phase of a transformation project for the legal department, in which we will address and optimise service delivery, knowledge management, team management and vendor management. After the project is finished, we expect that the renewed legal department will be seen as a business partner and will walk alongside stakeholders in key decision making, rather than support primarily on contractual negotiation and risk management. As for special projects, we have recently supported the payment industry team in the exploration and development of a new payment industry business line, and we have pioneered a legal risk assessment together with the operational risk team, to create and implement a specific methodology for evaluating and mitigating legal risks.
 

How do you keep up to date with changes in Dominican laws and regulations relevant to your organisation’s industry? 

Firstly, it is important to understand that in the Dominican Republic legislative changes are not as common and accelerated as in more matured economies. For this reason, we have relied upon traditional methods, such as personal and direct review of relevant newspapers, bulletins, and publications, which is not practicable on a day-to-day basis. In addition, we use indirect methods, such as obtaining information from lawyer’s community groups and reports by the banking association, which follow up on key legislation that impact the banking industry. In the Dominican Republic, changes in banking regulations are directly notified by the Superintendence of Banks. Other entities have established internal departments or dedicated personnel, whose primary role is to keep up to date on legislation and regulation changes and inform all members of the legal department and bank’s management. We are currently evaluating using this type of service, as it will be of immense help in helping us keep up to date with legislation and regulation changes, generating alerts for specific laws and regulations and having up to date information on a case-by-case basis. 

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why? 

 I am particularly concerned with where and how we should start using generative AI (artificial intelligence). This worries me as far as how we can generate meaningful and trusted outputs, given that this technology operates based on mathematical probabilities, there is a risk of generating incorrect outputs. In this regard, it will be incredibly challenging to establish correct controls in the validation process. Another key worry is losing competitiveness against other market players who implement this new technology faster and more efficiently than us. Finally, I am concerned with what this technology means for resourcing models and skills.