Canadian Lawyer InHouse

www.canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse 19 changes to protect consumers and financial markets, we're there, so it's quite an integrated role and a lot of fun. INHOUSE: How do you work with the other members of your executive team? CUDJOE: We're a small organization with only around 2,500 employees across the country, which means we have a relatively small executive team and a relatively small senior management team. The unique thing about being in an organization that's small is you get to be part of it all and you can wear many hats and roll up your sleeves to get things done as you need to. We work very closely with the senior executive team and senior manage- ment team and I'm part of that. One of the things I realized when I was thinking of joining the bank is that there are only about 40 people who make most of the decisions in the bank and I'll be one of them. It has been really incredible to be able to drive forward initiatives and not get lost in the broader organization. As we live up to the expectations of this role, we're working very collaboratively. We are involved right from beginning: supporting, cajoling, readjusting and then delivering and executing against what we've set out to do, whether it's a new product or an existing product offering. No two days are the same. INHOUSE: How do you plan to deal with risk management and compliance in the year ahead? CUDJOE: It's who we are. Our sole purpose is to manage legal regulatory compliance and criminal risk. The value of having these teams in-house is you really understand the organiza- tion and you can apply the risk plans that the organization has to the initiatives that we choose and the way we choose to address the challenges and opportunities that we see. We are in the business of taking risks as a bank. It is part of how we generate returns and deliver against the expectations of shareholders. We're always thinking about what risks we are taking and why we're taking them and where there is an opportunity to take more risks or different risks. That kind of calculus is a really interesting place to be in an organization, and it's a place where legal and compliance can really offer a lot. Compliance is table stakes in banking. It's highly regulated. We have prudential regulators, enforcement regulators and conduct regulators. We are seeing more activity as the regulators get more power and have fresh mandates from the government and the public to try to bring more transparency to the processes that we have. We welcome the opportunity to work with our regulators but more importantly to work for our clients. We want them to understand the arrangements that we are delivering to them. Sometimes, there is a lack of understanding, so we can do better to inform and, hopefully, we're moving toward that every day, so it is an opportunity for us. INHOUSE: How do you approach working with external counsel and in which areas? CUDJOE: External counsel are hugely important to us in banking. The interesting thing is external firms are also our clients. We hope that they bank with us and make deposits and borrow money from us and they are also service providers to us, so it's a complicated yet rewarding relationship. We use law firms in a number of different realms. I most frequently deal with them as advisors on things the bank needs to do as a corporate entity. When we participate in capital markets, we involve external counsel. If we need complex or special regulatory advice, we work with them. We partner with them on bigger mandates such as engaging in M&A activity. We regularly work with lawyers across the country on lending transactions and leasing transactions. They help us deliver services that clients need and to put products in place that clients want. The partnership makes sense, given their specialized knowl- edge and the timeframes we have to deal with. As a relatively new leader to this organiza- tion, the external counsel I've been able to get to know have been very helpful to me because some of them have worked with the bank for a long time, so there is some institutional memory there that can really help us. On the flip side, it's been really terrific to share what my organization is doing with some of the firms I have worked with over time and to help to draw on their expertise to help us as we are encountering new challenges. INHOUSE: What goals do you have for your legal department in 2020? CUDJOE: Fundamentally, my goal is to make sure we are keeping up with and getting ahead of change happening across our organization. We continue to move with great pace to execute against a very ambitious strategic plan, which will have us moving into delivering services for small and medium-size enterpris- es in a digital platform. I strive to continue supporting that and to bring some of the new thinking in the delivery of legal services to the organization, so I have a great interest in the intersection of tech and law and had the opportunity to do some of that work in prior roles, and I see a great opportunity here as our organization is small enough and nimble enough and frankly poised to make changes. There aren't a lot of sacred cows, so there is an opportunity to bring new pieces such as document automation. We have a whole series of initiatives as we set our 2020 goals. A big part of that is how we collaborate across the organization. It can be easy to work in silos and to say this is my work, but the greater satisfaction and value we can bring to the organization occurs when we lean in and participate in the planning right from the beginning. We have a lot of multi-par- ty cross-functional initiatives that we're going to drive in the year ahead to bring our perspectives and to have all of us coming together and working toward the same goals.

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