About

Fully owned by Sampo (listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange), If P&C Insurance offers a full range of insurance solutions and services to a broad customer base, from private individuals to large corporate customers. Dag Rehme is the chief legal officer and general counsel for the group and William McKechnie is the head of legal Sweden. Headed by Rehme, the legal department is formed by 80 employees in seven countries throughout the Nordic and Baltic region. In 2018, the team carried out a major restructuring of the legal function, being one of the first companies in the non-life insurance industry to merge corporate and insurance legal teams into one. The team has also created a regulatory function under Karin Lidman who also runs knowledge management. The gradual procurement of TopDanmark, Denmark’s number two insurer, has been one of the major achievements for the team. The team has carried out a cross border merger of the insurance operations in Sweden and Finland, creating a simple pan-Nordic branch structure within the group and has dealt with immense regulatory challenges during the last number of years in the form of Solvency II, IDD, GDPR and AML, without increasing the number of lawyers employed within the group. In addition, the legal team has been handling one of the largest investigations by the Swedish Competition Authority, concerning broker mediated commercial insurances. Finally, the team has contributed to the reduction of the number of disputes in insurance operations in most jurisdictions in joint cooperation with claims function. Talking about the team ethos, Rehme states: ‘We create value and safety by being trustworthy, helpful and by providing bold advice in an open and creative environment. We strive to be the best legal function in the financial industry in Europe. We have run a culture and values project over the last number of months, during which all our lawyers have contributed in defining the culture and values which we have adopted in our new legal organisation’.