Team size: Three

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

My focus as regional head of legal has been legal risk management for the business and providing strategic partnership to executive teams. It is important for my function to be seen as ‘part of the team’ rather than as gatekeepers, and to this end, I sit within the executive teams in the regions I support, allowing for ‘real time’ participation in the business. Apart from the more traditional spaces that legal teams support on (M&A, regulatory matters) we have worked on strategic internal structuring and risk management projects involving understanding implications for regulatory compliance, tax and actuarial reserving.

My team and I have collaborated with the Group’s vendor management function in formulating processes that allow for a more proportionate allocation of resources to vendor contracting based off a risk rating framework for these contracts. This then ties into the insurer’s risk and control assessments relating to contracting, allowing for a consistent approach across the business. In a parallel project, we have worked with the risk function to help formulate controls for legal risks as part of the wider risk self-assessments across the business. The work done within the Irish business has formed the basis of similar exercises in other parts of the Group.

In the transaction space, in the last year I have led negotiations for the unwinding of a significant agency agreement (initially set up as a captive insurance arrangement, with us inheriting contractual terms as part of the acquisition of the business), where the agent had potential regulatory compliance issues with contagion risk. Unlike with M&A or other more widely used contractual arrangements, there was no ‘market practice’ or precedent to work off. We were able to negotiate an exit with the agent followed by the unwinding of an administration services contract in a way that was cognizant of policyholder safeguarding, that limited operational disruption, and that protected the financial and regulatory position of the insurer. This was a result of a close collaboration of the legal function with the actuarial, finance, and operational teams. Crafting terms and leading negotiations for this project could really only have been effectively done by someone embedded in the business, with a deep understanding of the wider contractual arrangements, and the financial and operational implications faced by the business, developed over time.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Ireland over the next five-ten years?

Rather than replicating expertise within the company that can be ‘bought’ from the market with greater flexibility, I see the focus of successful in-house legal teams being the conversion of technical advice into executable strategy. In-house counsel will need to understand wider financial matters (the interaction of tax, regulation, business objectives for example) to better inform their role in the business. I see the role of the function expanding sideways into risk management and business strategy rather than ‘deepening’ in specialist expertise.