What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

During the past year, the bank’s main challenge was focused on designing, negotiating and executing a capital strengthening plan, due to the involvement of a new majority shareholder (Grupo Coril). To achieve this, a series of complex financial operations had to be carried out, including a portfolio securitisation for more than S/1,000m, successive capital increases that allowed the bank’s capital to be increased to around S/850m, and subordinated hybrid loans or bonds for around S/100m.

Despite the above, it is always a challenge to participate once again in a banking reorganisation and in an integration process to a new economic group. This certainly involves reorganising structures, teams, processes, among others, in order to find accurate synergies that allows the bank to achieve efficiencies at all corporate levels, which in turn allows us to optimise the resources of the group to be more profitable. We are in that process, and we are confident that once again we will achieve the proposed corporate goals.

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

Looking into the future, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) will have the greatest impact. There are no limits to its use, as it will allow, for example, to reduce the time for drafting or reviewing contracts, and create, analyse or compare legal strategies. This will equally challenge internal legal teams, as strategic thinking will have to be further developed in order to fully optimise the potential of AI.

Notwithstanding the above, there are several questions being discussed worldwide in order to establish some criteria that allow for a regulatory framework in the face of the advancement of AI. Topics such as the protection of personal data, copyright, or whether access to AI should be free or subsidised for people who do not have the economic resources to access it and avoid disadvantages among them, and establishing ethical limits for its use. With the advent of AI, a new era has truly begun, and it is up to us to be up-to-date with this to avoid getting lost along the way.

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

With regards to this question, I always express my concern about the fragility of democracy in Peru and its social impact. Similarly, when it comes to legal initiatives in parliament, we see that some of them are being developed without the necessary constitutional support, need, reasonableness, proportionality, normative coherence, among others. These, when becoming laws, have or would have a negative impact on society, generating impacts on the economy, business freedom, labour market, among others. That is why it is necessary for parliament to carry out a much more thoughtful process in order to avoid creating laws that do not contribute to the growth of our country.