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

Our company is on a journey towards greater automation, process simplification, implementation of efficiencies and agile business model with the ability to create, respond, change, and ultimately succeed in any uncertain and turbulent environment. There are several initiatives in the pipeline to deliver enhanced technology solutions for our business, which focus on digitisation that will improve the overall experience of our customers and life planners. This digital transformation will be based around the smart use of digital applications that provide greater flexibility for our customers to purchase our products and use our services and the smart use of technology platforms to make our internal process more efficient.

Our legal team is involved from the early stage of this rapid digitisation of organisation’s business model; we have responded to multi-faceted demands for different legal services across the project teams, simplified and rationalised legal processes to speed up the projects delivery, introduced work flow and process to ensure compliance and minimise risks, established a monitoring mechanism to identify anomalous and noncompliant conduct in real time, and navigated a number of complexities to obtain the required approvals from the regulators.

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

The pandemic has made a lasting impact on our team, where we have been pushed to rapidly adapt to the new normal. The pandemic has reshaped our operating model; we now have a significant role in assisting the organisation to navigate those rapidly changing expectations, by preparing for the new probabilities and building changing expectations into the strategic plans which ranged from remote selling to working remotely, all within a tightly regulated environment. To the extent possible, our team must offer strategic clarity and work to assure the sustainability of revenue through changing legal, social, and environmental conditions. The company has always recognised the need for a strong in-house legal team that deeply understands the needs of the business and acts as a strategic partner at various levels. Fortunately, we have a strong in-house team embedded within the business with central oversight of legal, regulatory, compliance and enterprise risks who understands the commercial and operational needs of the business.

The unusual business environment created by the pandemic has been swiftly followed by other shocks. Are you now putting more emphasis on preparing for the unforeseen and, if so, what does this entail?

We are more prepared to face future challenges by developing a resilient operating model that would fit for the times; from global pandemic, climate change, cyber security to the emergence of new areas of law, such as data protection and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) which demands a strong framework of technology, resourcing, and process.