About

An in-house lawyer for over 30 years, Wallaya Kaewrungruang is one of the most well-known and successful in-house lawyers in Southeast Asia and is head of The Siam Commercial Bank (SCB)’s legal function, the largest legal team among financial institutions in Thailand comprising 263 lawyers overall. Kaewrungruang believes that this is ‘the most challenging position’ she has experienced in her career, ‘since [she is] responsible for the legal, compliance, and fraud functions’. Her prior roles very much inform her current strategies at SCB, and she benefits from the variety of positions she has held up to this point: ‘My career extends beyond my primary role as a chief legal and control officer at a major private financial institution to educational institutions and governmental sectors, and I would say that it is these roles taken together that have moulded me as a legal professional’. They have allowed her to build the formidable skillset which allows her to tackle the major transformation that is underway at SCB. ‘The field of banking is changing rapidly’, she explains. ‘SCB is leading the digital banking revolution in Southeast Asia with new inventions to support digital banking and investment services which are currently expanding widely in Thailand’. New technologies are also transforming the way Kaewrungruang’s legal team accomplishes its goals: ‘Technology is similarly changing the nature of legal practice, and to this end I have formed a new digital law division within our legal function, and instituted training programs for lawyers in my department and supporting divisions to be fully equipped with knowledge of technology law’. Speaking generally about what makes a great in-house counsel, Kaewrungruang says, ‘successful in-house lawyers should always set a golden rule that they will balance doing business with minimising legal risk in order to reach successful business goals. If your business is successful, so are you’.