About

Made up of nine members, the majority of which are women, the legal team of Profuturo AFP is comprised of experienced lawyers with many years of practice in the private pension fund system and in different areas of law including consumer protection, administrative law, data privacy, capital markets, corporate law, litigation and contractual negotiation. Chief legal officer Sheila La Serna is responsible for leading the legal advisory on marketing, commercial, IT, operations, and regulatory affairs. Nancy Chavez Cano is another high ranking member of the team with more than 20 years of experience in the industry, playing a key role in the legal advisory to the back-end functions of payment of benefits, collections and customer claims. Her dedication and detail-orientated assistance to internal and external clients is highly appreciated by both. Jorge Moran and Maria del Carmen Zayerz are veterans of the industry and members of the litigation and negotiation team, and are in charge of the stock of judicial, arbitration and administrative proceedings. They have participated in many different business initiatives including those that foster the digital transformation of the company. ‘Our team has been critical to maintain accounting provisions below US$10,000 for contingent proceedings. As part of their extraordinary team work, we have no provisions for sanctioning proceedings related to regulatory issues’, says La Serna. The team also has the contribution of Grace Matos, an economist who works in the corporate governance sub-unit, where they work in becoming the leader within AFP in these practices. She is a member of the general secretariat, which centralises the information management of the board of directors and its six committees. Regarding the compliance and AML functions, senior compliance analyst Ana Pomalima was key to the implementation of the compliance, anticorruption and ethical culture in the company, as well as the local and international regulations and norms. She also served as a nexus with the company’s regulatory supervisory authorities. Christian Germany as corporate anti-money laundering/combating financing of terrorism (AML/FT) coordinator (Economist) and AMLF/AFT assistant Pamela Espinoza were critical for the adequate monitoring of AML/FT risk within our mandatory and voluntary contribution products, and to keep the AML/FT risk within our risk appetite framework. ‘We have been a strategic partner for Profuturo AFP, managing the legal, AML and compliance risk, while providing value added advice required for the digital transformation of the company. After the dramatic regulatory changes to the investment process, in 2016 we assigned a lawyer to work exclusively for the investment process; a decision that we do not regret since we were able to focus in the different processes at the private pension fund manager level (AFP level), while at the pension funds level the legal advice was provided in a timely and efficient manner’, explains La Serna. Last year the legal team won an arbitration against an investment fund manager in which the pension funds were awarded a US$1.8m indemnification. In a changing regulatory environment, the legal team has worked successfully in many different business strategic initiatives and innovation projects. One prominent project was the completion of the Centro Integral del Adulto Mayor which involved an investment of more than US$2m under the Obras Por Impuestos regime. ‘Our culture follows the mission of the company, becoming and the best AFP in the country to serve our clients in an agile and simple manner. This is developed through a permanent sense of “thinking out of the box” while taking care of the legal and regulatory risk’, says Chavez Cano.