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

Fortunately, given my role as in-house counsel, and the internal clients to which I provide legal advice, I get to work in strategic areas of the bank and provide them with end-to-end counseling in very sophisticated and tailored made transactions, getting to know not only the legal aspects of a transaction, but also commercial and operational issues. However, over the last year, I have contributed to one of the most important and historic transactions across the Mexican financial and banking industry: Citi’s corporate reorganisation in Mexico. This reorganisation will result in the divestiture by Citi of its retail and consumer businesses and the transfer of its institutional and investment businesses to a newly formed, wholly owned holding company of a newly created financial group in Mexico.

The entire legal team has been involved in this monumental transaction, as many steps, processes and requirements must be met, from the acquisition of a new bank license, regulators authorizations, demerger of a huge business portfolio and merger with and into a new Mexican bank, creation of a new holding financial group holding company, analysis of all implications from legal to operational, among others.

The legal department must act as a liaison with all the stakeholders and keep the pace as a leader and meaningful partner. One of our biggest risks is to comply and deliver excellence without affecting our stakeholders’ and investors’ interests. Therefore, we must carry out a very detailed analysis of the applicable legal framework from all the perspectives to ensure that the newly formed bank takes the highest value and advantage from the assets and capital that will become the core of its business.

During this process, we have built strong and effective communication with all stakeholders being an ally rather than a stopper, being aligned, so everyone has very clear objectives and milestones, assuring that all the players know where we are and where we want to go.

As in any other industry, we face a constant race with our usual competitors and on the other hand the emergence of new competitors that are improving the service and products offering to clients is one of the most important challenges we will face. Currently, the finance and banking industry is under a deep revolution given the transformation in the digital world and the banks must evolve together with their clients’ needs. Therefore, as in-house counsel our duty is to provide our internal clients with in-depth legal advice ensuring safety and soundness, but also to position the bank ahead of the competitors.

In the upcoming future, our most critical challenge as a legal department would be to start-up business ensuring a smooth and friendly transition for all our clients, so they can be more than satisfied with Citi’s banking and finance products, allowing Citi to position as the best option in the market, not only in Mexico but as a global company. As in-house counsel, my constant goal is to create bridges with all the stakeholders to find together new ways to deliver our clients the best.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

As in-house counsel there is always constant pressure to keep up with our internal clients’ needs and we are compelled to be more innovative and efficient. As artificial intelligence moves forward in many different industries, extraordinary improvements in legal services, driven primarily by technology, are reshaping the industry at an accelerating pace. However, legal departments are not always a priority in budget terms, but we are constantly challenged to do more with less, find new solutions within very short timeframes, as business is very dynamic and a fast and efficient advice would make the difference.

Innovation in legal services is not always something feasible in the short term, due to a lot of different reasons going through budget and authority approvals (which could take many months). Therefore, as in-house counsel we face the challenge to be innovative but without relying that much in the direction of technological advances. Is the latter possible? Are there ways to foster innovation in legal departments without state-of-the-art technology? I believe that even though it is not an easy way, the answer is yes, it is possible. The entire legal department has the opportunity to look around our internal clients’ needs and innovate even though all the answers will pop up easily, there are always opportunities to make improvements. Identifying those opportunities are not always like an epiphany or legendary but making important changes or improvements can have a significant impact to the business but algo within another team members.

During the innovation process several important factors must be considered to bring tools that will make a significant improvement, as bearing in mind clients’ needs to deliver the best for the company. From my legal perspective as in-house counsel, our internal clients need faster contracting processes regardless the type of transaction and for plain vanilla transactions, they need to be able to self-service more often given there are documents that do not require negotiation at all. For these types of documents, sometimes they find interactions with the legal department slow, and templates and self-service come in to help. Bearing this in mind, as in-house counsel I identified the need to have templates for the most common products, such as loan agreements under local law and non-disclosure agreements. Even though for institutional clients’ loan documents are tailored made, standardised templates help all the legal team to have a very clear idea of the minimum terms and conditions that any loan document must meet without losing time in each transaction drafting from scratch. Additionally, standardised templates not only help to make loan execution process faster but could eventually help to reduce litigation risks, as the litigation team was also involved in this project. Given all the team can take advantage of templates, there is a unified approach to legal matters across the legal department and whenever somebody identifies an opportunity for improvement in a certain transaction, we could include it our standardised templates and promoted new ideas that can have a real and positive impact. There is a variety of perspectives that help to bring to the table new and fresh ideas, but it is important that those ideas help all the team to grow together, and standardised templates help to make it happen.

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

In my role as in-house counsel, I have the opportunity not just to provide legal advice and managing legal matters and have been privileged to handle a wide range of duties which allowed me to develop a diverse skill set, but also, as I have been promoted to new responsibilities, to get involved and develop leadership, team management, and fostering a strong legal partnership with the company’s stakeholders to support the Citi’s growth and success, increasing my network.

Since I started working at Citi, 14 years ago, I have had the opportunity to meet and work with people that have taught me everything I know, from good and bad experiences, and have trusted in me and my judgement and have encouraged me to believe in myself. I know for sure that this has been a critical factor for my career. As in-house counsel, I am always coaching my legal and colleagues, specially the youngest one, because I know that a mentor con have a huge positive impact on employee growth, eventually this will help them to pursue their own goals and will have a meaningful impact in the company which will reflect in better results for our clients.

I truly believe in mentorship as it is a win-win for everyone. Mentors can have a very positive influence and are required in every company. Having people willing to help, having someone to turn to when you have questions, doubts, or just need honest advice can have a huge impact in professional careers. Furthermore, mentorship helps to enable minority groups and helps to increase diversity and inclusion.

I truly believe that mentorship allows to create a confident environment to facilitate knowledge sharing, expand networking and help create a strong corporate culture where everyone feels they have a support network for growth and greater job satisfaction and engagement.