About

Novartis Healthcare deals with legal and compliance affairs under one roof, via a four-person team led by Monina Vierneza in her role as country head of legal and compliance and Asia cluster lead for compliance. The team also contains legal and compliance manager Lloyd Apostol, specialist risk and audit officer Mary Ann Vargas and paralegal and compliance administrative officer Anna Licop, giving it a broad and versatile set of skills that allow it to deal with the full range of challenges it faces. Vierneza goes into the steady improvements the team has made recently: ‘The legal and compliance team, aside from continuously evolving itself to be a strong and solid business enabler, also progressed in the last two years in a more strategic, risk-based approach in managing the legal and compliance functions’. It has also become adept at ‘taking into consideration historical risks across the enterprise and the business, and innovating on the methods and mechanisms to identify emerging risks proactively and provide the governance framework to address them’. This approach has borne fruit in its performance on a number of projects, with Vierneza mentioning one in particular. ‘One of the highlights of 2017 for the legal and compliance team was its strong leadership and strategic and operational direction on managing the CBA negotiations and the threats of a strike during the process’, she explains. ‘The legal and compliance team identified all the potential scenarios and legal issues and how to address these, while at the same time ensuring the operational preparedness and business continuity of the entire organisation should any of the identified scenarios happen. Moreover, the legal team’s work on the CBA did not end at its successful signing, but transcends this as it led the entire organisation to strengthen the partnership with the management and the union’. Alongside the newly updated operational framework, Vierneza details the team’s culture and how this has underpinned its success: ‘The legal and compliance team operates on the basis of trust and integrity, awareness of each person’s responsibilities and strong commitment to being a true business enabler, always with the clear objective of doing what is best for the patients that we serve’.