About

Şebnem S. Karaduman, chief legal counsel, assistant general manager and executive board member manages the in-house legal team which provides services as three sub functions: legal consultancy, corporate litigation and contracts. Seda Sayınbatur is the manager of the legal consultancy department which provides legal advice and consultancy services, follows up new legislations and updates departments therein regarding new legislations, provides opinions to public authorities to shape draft laws and provides assistance in correspondence with governmental authorities. Internally it provides its advice through the ‘legal consultancy portal’ as described by Karaduman which also serves as an electronic archive for legal opinions. Gülay Akalay is the group head of the corporate litigation department which represents Allianz Turkey companies before the courts in a wide range of disputes and monitors external law offices through the litigation management system. Eylem Göçmen is the manager of the contracts department which reviews and approves all the contracts of Allianz Turkey companies, updating all contracts as per changing legislation and business needs. This department also conducts negotiations with the counterparties, interprets the clauses and shapes the business approach in case of disputes with counterparties, deals with M&A and other corporate projects in conjunction with Allianz Germany. The Allianz legal team have outstanding expertise especially in insurance law, private pension law, corporate and commercial law, law of obligations, e-commerce law, data privacy law, consumer protection law, anti-trust law, labour law, trademark law, criminal law and maritime law. It has been involved in numerous important M&A deals, asset sale-purchasing projects, a complete digitisation of all legal workflows and undertook an active role in online projects. Karaduman highlights that the new motto is to, ‘pioneer in innovative legal approach, and focus on understanding business needs to provide the most fitting solutions’. In order to achieve this, the team has worked on getting to know its internal customers and business functions better. They do this by understanding their ambitions, tracking their work plans, having a deeper product knowledge and not making do with just addressing the legal questions when asked but proactively undertaking responsibilities to be able to shape projects end-to end with a holistic legal approach. Karaduman adds that, ‘our efforts up to now have been fruitful and we are very keen on embracing many more, new approaches to the in-house legal service’.