About

Since taking on the role of general counsel seven years ago for Swiss multinational private bank, Pictet Asset Management, Nicolas Tschopp has been central to a number of initiatives and changes within the legal department. Most recently he has worked on launching an initiative to digitalise all the legal documents: ‘We did not just set up a virtual repository for the legal team. We built a tool that allows any stakeholder across the company to have access to the documents they need’, says Tschopp. This process has increased accuracy and reduced risks massively. ‘We like to say that this tool is “fed by legal, used by the business”’, adds Tschopp. In his role as chairman of the Pictet group regulatory committee, the team embarked on a journey to structure and implement a regulatory watch covering the entire Pictet Group: ‘The main challenge was to leverage the knowledge of our regulatory specialists from the legal and compliance teams across our 21 locations and to foster collaboration. For this we created and staffed a regulatory office, which can be compared to the conductor of an orchestra’, says Tschopp. The role has been put in place to keep the global view of new regulations and ensure proper implementation. He additionally built an IT tool where regulatory specialists track all new regulations, which are then shared automatically with all stakeholders. Tschopp remarks that he found this governance to offer a good balance between keeping the legal and compliance teams focused on their respective areas of expertise and ‘at the same time building a holistic view in a collaborative manner’.