Team size: 12

Which recent political, economic, or regulatory changes have impacted the company and the team the most?

Covid-19 and the consequent financial crisis across Europe have highly impacted Eurobank. We established a remote work model, which recently evolved to a hybrid model. This new work concept enhances accountability as it is oriented on the delivery of tangible results rather than time commitment. Obviously, the new digital environment requires an efficient transformation process and substantial IT investments from the company. The passage to the digital era has been accelerated due to Covid-19, which I believe to be a positive aspect. Concerning the regulatory side, our organisation has been impacted by the new legal framework on corporate governance and on non-performing exposure of Greek banks. For Eurobank this has resulted in substantial reduction of NPEs. The participation of my team in this achievement was far from being negligible.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

The digitalisation of the banking products and services has had a crucial impact on the banking industry and created new needs for legal support of banking services, such as e-banking, video-banking, mobile-banking. The digital transformation of the banking sector results in a more linear, less expensive, customer friendly, and more efficient banking. Nowadays, the banking sector invests lots of resources in IT and modern technologies and is a driver for the technological acceleration. The legal team has a crucial role in managing the legal risk. The reduction of the cost of risk is translated in terms of bottom-line results into profits’ increase. In my view this is the new role of the in-house legal teams.

In a changing financial landscape, how does the company remain competitive against new phenomena such as fintech and blockchain, and how does the legal team assist with this?

New phenomena such as fintech, artificial intelligence, machine learning are big challenges for the banking industry. They enhance competitiveness among credit institutions. The new rule for all players is to face those challenges and survive the competition – blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, crypto assets offer new opportunities for growth to banks. The legal team assists with these challenges by creating a safe legal environment and by protecting the organisation from new risks associated with such phenomena. The traditional legal function of a bank was the mitigation of counterparty risks through solid contracts and strong collaterals, which were able to enhance collections. The new role of the in-house legal team in a changing financial landscape is the detection and prevention of legal risks arising from the cyberactivity, from the creation and distribution of crypto-assets, and from transactions with cryptocurrencies.