First, can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently?

As in-house legal team of Allianz Türkiye, we provide legal advice and consultancy services, guidance on resolving regulatory challenges, as well as take an active role in shaping the legal environment via legislative studies through various associations and close relations with the regulators. As Allianz Türkiye’s strategy is built around agility, productivity, simplicity, and technology; digital and customer-oriented projects have always been of top importance. This focus emphasises the value of accurate and clean data for a seamless customer journey. My team, therefore, burnt a lot of midnight oil designing the legal framework of data verification methods, capability of serving a paperless customer experience across the board. E-signature, distant sales procedures, marketing consent and data privacy requirements, penetration of insurance products to electronic markets, partnerships with fintech companies kept Allianz legal team busy. As data is the most precious asset, we concentrated on protecting both customer data and the company data considering data privacy and antitrust regulations. Awareness activities, trainings and documentation revision projects were among our priorities to ensure full compliance. Besides these, dispute management has always been another lively part of our responsibilities. The real value creation in dispute management, lies with not only in carrying out litigation processes but also defining root causes of the disputes, highlighting the improvement areas in internal processes if any and monitor curing actions. This certainly requires a regular communication line with business units and cross functional teamwork. Given the economic uncertainty, legal cost management has been more crucial than ever. I strongly believe that supporting claims management by wise legal risk and return approach create positive impact on both legal cost management and customer centricity.

Which recent political, economic or regulatory changes have impacted the company and the team the most?

Establishment of the insurance regulation and supervision authority was a major development for our sector and the regulatory environment. So far, we have seen a focused and constructive approach and had the opportunity to work closely for new regulations to address sector needs such as digital options in customer touch points, renewal of product general conditions and insurance sales activities. The Internal Systems Regulation which has come into force in 2021-yearend was another major progress for insurance companies that will significantly affect the organisational set up, strengthen the control environment, and ensure a more dedicated Board from corporate governance perspective. I would also like to mention the developments in our local data privacy law and regulations. As insurance companies process health data through health insurance, life, and other relevant products our sector is much more exposed to data privacy requirements.