About

Team size: 50

Major legal advisers: Allen & Overy, Baker McKenzie, DLA Piper & Linklaters

What were the main difficulties your company faced during the initial Covid-19 lockdown?

The Covid-19 pandemic brought many challenges, but also opportunities. Within the legal team, we moved swiftly to deploy a “distance selling framework” to enable our sales colleagues to operate in an agile, legally-compliant way while working remotely. This was a fantastic cross-functional effort led by the legal team moving at pace and as a result we were able to book our first policy electronically within a month of the first lockdown. Lombard International Group is a truly international organisation so we are used to working across multiple markets and time zones but the challenges of the pandemic and the impact it has had on our people has been profound. As an organisation, we have been very focused on employee well-being and this was a huge priority for me across our legal, compliance, regulatory affairs and company secretarial teams. Over the past year, like everyone else, we have had to pivot and one positive outcome has been greater engagement with people at all levels of the organisation and team as we worked together to ensure there was no disruption to our business.

Did the Brexit deal reached at the end of 2020 give you and your business greater clarity for the future?

Another potential disruptor was of course Brexit – but we planned for it and had already set up a regulated UK entity to protect our ability to passport our products. However, much like many other companies, we are still waiting for guidance on some of the longer-term solutions to protect the ability to write business on a freedom of services basis. As a result of additional regulatory changes, we set up a new broker entity in France and supported the business in entering several new markets across Europe.

What were some of the main projects you worked on this year?

To drive greater operational efficiency, I launched Lombard’s first law firm panel review which resulted in the appointment of four international firms to our Group panel and a number of local expert law firms across our 20 core markets and this is now up and running with great success. Aside from supporting our business, I am particularly proud of the work we have been doing as an organisation to support our diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. Having founded the Lombard “Women in Business” network group in 2018, we partnered with our HR colleagues to deliver a comprehensive mentoring program across Europe for all our colleagues which has gone very well.