About

Suraj Singh is the current vice president – legal at US based bank Wells Fargo in India, and leads Wells Fargo’s Enterprise Global Services (EGS) legal teams across India and the Philippines, having joined in 2016. Consisting of seven lawyers across the two countries, the team provides, according to Singh, ‘consistent high-quality advice on various areas such as corporate law, employment and labour law, economic zone law, intellectual property rights, environmental regulations, foreign exchange matters, telecommunications, information technology law, corporate secretarial, contractual review and litigations’ to the aforementioned EGS platform. In addition to Singh, other noted team members are Amit Anand, Rittika Chhetri, Aparna Ralegaonkar, and Sangeeta Surendra, each of whom supervise activities in specific legal practice areas in an outstanding way. Innovative to its core, the team operates with a “do more with less” philosophy – Singh claiming that it ‘innovates and leverages technology to ease day-to-day operations’ – including a legal document validator tool and the digitisation process of inter-company contracts. In terms of the former, this serves as a communications tracker and creates reports, helping to, according to Singh, ‘address concerns about any negative impact related to communications with the external world’ at the request of senior management. The team also worked with Wells Fargo’s in-house technology team to build an e-tool that had the effect of ‘replacing paper-based contractual documentation with electronic forms’ serving to increase efficiency of the process and prevent errors. Speaking of the team’s impact in terms of the overall strategic objectives of the company, Singh states: ‘Wells Fargo EGS has rapidly expanded over the past few years across India and Philippines, growing to over 15,000 team members. The legal team provided significant support to the leadership team during this complex expansion, by providing cost-effective legal advice and support’. In doing so, the team was crucial to closing all relevant real estate deals and obtaining the applicable regulatory approvals, all amidst a context of ‘tight timelines, without compromising on quality. At the same time, focus on day to day activities was also maintained’. At the forefront of the financial legal industry in India, the team managed to secure a regulatory approval that was the first of its kind in the Indian market – to relocate its facility, from one Special Economic Zone (SEZ) unit to a different SEZ unit. Singh sums it up as acting ‘in partnership with its stakeholders to find strategic, creative solutions that best serve EGS’ priorities, prudently manage risks, and contribute to the organisation’s success’.