Team size: 11

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

The most significant cases or transactions that we carried out over the past year were centered on the normalisation of overall business activities following the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which several initiatives carried out by the company certainly required full support from the legal and compliance team.

These initiatives include the following:

Digitising customer acquisition and collection activities:

We have added several major features to our mobile application, whereby after these improvements, the customer acquisition process, credit review up to collection activities can be done online. Currently, our consumers can easily apply for credit, make purchases of goods and services, and make instalment payments with our mobile application, without physical meeting at all. Even the KYC process is carried out online while still complying with the prevailing regulations. The legal and compliance team also plays a significant role in the development and improvement of our mobile apps particularly in maintaining the legality of our mobile application.

(ii) Strengthening funding capabilities:

After the Covid-19 pandemic subsided, we continued to equip ourselves with strong funding to reach sales levels to pre-Covid-19. The legal and compliance team has successfully assisted the company in issuing Perpetual Bonds worth IDR435bn (equivalent to US30m) in 2021 followed by the issuance of Public Bonds worth IDR1tr (equivalent to US67.5m) in 2022, both with favourable coupon rates. The issuance of the above-mentioned bonds was challenging due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and general economic instability, however we managed to achieve this success despite the many challenges faced.

(iii) Strengthening compliance awareness amidst of Hybrid Working:

Since 2020, we have established hybrid working, whereby there is a split operation among the employees. Hybrid working greatly affects our business activities and the way our employees work, and also created new risks. We, in the legal and compliance team, fully understand these risks, for example the risk of fraud, data confidentiality, and financial incidents. To mitigate this foreseen risk, we have massively implemented a compliance education program since 2021 with topics including: i) strengthening the employees’ awareness on code of ethics; ii) how to avoid financial and non-financial incidents; and iii) anti-fraud and whistle blowing system.

Did the pandemic lead to a lasting increase in the interaction your legal team has with the strategic plans of the company?

Yes, the pandemic led to a lasting increase in my legal and compliance team’s interaction with the company’s strategic plans. Currently, the legal and compliance team is incredibly involved in every strategic plan of the company, starting from the product and service, feature development, funding, investment, and others.