About

Part of Spain’s multinational financial services company Banco Santander, Santander Consumer Bank has total assets of NOK 121bn in the Nordic region and are leaders in car and leisure finance in addition to the usual retail banking products. Among its 600 employees in Norway, are nine lawyers in the legal department who benefit the company as there is a single point of contact for the business for each regulatory and legal topic. The team grew from four lawyers in 2016 and legal director Norway Carine Lindman-Johannesen explains that ‘part of why we have been able to get such a substantial increase in staffing is because the legal department has shown it’s true value for the business more clearly after the split between legal and compliance and also because of the outstanding quality advise the legal department is giving’. Adding, ‘we have focused on recruiting the persons sharing our values and beliefs and have been able to recruit highly skilled and well renowned lawyers in all positions’. In addition to Lindman-Johannesen is ‘the experienced and highly competent’ Herman Jorkjend, leading the legal work in the funding and capital requirement area. He has been a key resource in connection with Santander’s steadily increasing self-funding ratio, advising on a number of secured and unsecured funding arrangements across the Nordic region, including the “Bilkreditts’” (Norway), and “KIMIs” (Finland) securitisation transactions. Silje Due-Bugge is another high profile member of the team who is leading the legal work on the regulatory side in addition to being secretary to the board and ‘has been instrumental in building a strong governance in the bank, and is the go-to person for all matter relating to regulatory guidelines, governance and internal control’. Other team members singled out for their contribution are legal counsel data protection and privacy Eli Karine Navestad who is described as ‘one of Norway’s leading data privacy specialists and has been instrumental for the bank in achieving GDPR compliance’, and legal counsel Morten Karlsen who is considered as the team’s ‘greatest all-rounder’ and leads the legal side of all auto loan products (where Santander has the biggest market share in Norway) and insurance products as well as AML. The legal team is credited for its involvement on a comprehensive set of projects and transactions, such as the bank’s GDPR project, entering into sales finance agreements with major companies such as Elkjøp and Power, major captive agreements with some of the large Norwegian car importers, entering into a cooperation agreement with If Insurance, launching a new and innovative car rental services, executing a strategic residual value agreement with one of biggest leasing players in Norway, new securitisation deals and the sale of large bad debt portfolios. Explaining the culture of the team, to Lindman-Johannesen had the following to say: ‘The legal team works closely with the business to understand their business needs in order to act as a valued partner to the business, while always acting as the advisor and legal gatekeeper of the company’.