Could you share with us the story of your path to becoming an in-house counsel? What motivated you to choose this career path?

I had the chance to work in different law offices while I was studying at university and in the legal team of a famous paint-petrochemical company after my graduation. In these places, I observed the corporate culture, and I personally experienced how in-house lawyers make important contributions to companies with a preventive legal perspective in this life cycle. This had a positive impact on me. After my internship, I worked as an in-house lawyer for global companies operating in the fields of logistics and insurance, for many years. I analysed a wide variety of contracts, provided legal advice for different teams on the legal issues they faced, and managed thousands of lawsuit. From a preventive law perspective, I can say that the area of compliance is becoming increasingly important and a rising trend in the world. In this context, while I was working in finance, in the last 3 years I have been working more professionally in compliance area and carried out different compliance projects. Currently, I work in the field of compliance at Garanti BBVA, which is the entity of BBVA, a global financial group. 

In your role as an in-house counsel, what are the main responsibilities and tasks you handle on a day-to-day basis?

Currently, I am working on compliance with changing legislation in areas such as banking, insurance, crypto and payment systems in Turkey and Europe. The financial group I work for has radical customer protection perspective. As part of this approach, I examine the processes and documents for the protection of customers in the products and services offered to customers within this financial group, first in the bank and then, if necessary, in other subsidiaries. I develop policies, standards, procedures and processes in certain areas for this purpose. I organise certain trainings to increase the level of awareness of employees, and I also carry out controls to ensure that these trainings are received by them. I conduct certain analyses regarding practices that are considered risky, provide recommendations, controls and measures to make them comply with the applicable legislation, and make reports within this framework.

What are some of the key challenges you have faced as a rising star in-house counsel, and how have you overcome them? 

 The adoption of the Legal and Compliance culture by company managers and employees, and raising awareness about it is one of the main problems I have faced. It is quite difficult to identify risky issues, to create preventive warnings and measures for them, and to increase the awareness of people to comply with them. While creating preventive measures, human resources may be required from time to time, as well as technical tools such as software and tools. Since such elements create additional costs for companies, investing in them can be costly. At this point, I can state that when I explain important of issues, the possible consequence of regulator sanctions, reputational impacts on the market, loss of massive customers with data, people act more sensitively and better awareness occurs at this point. Here, I can say that the critical thing for me within the company is to convince people and achieve consensus.