Canadian Lawyer InHouse

31 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE SEPTEMBER 2017 W hen Alena Thouin arrived at Alterna Savings and Bank three years ago, there was no internal legal department and the financial institution was in the midst of a tremendous growth spurt. Her mandate was to create a team to address legal issues as well as help the organization meet im - mediate demands that included taking the 100-year-old institution into the digital age at a time of increased demands in the area of compliance. Thouin is general counsel and corporate secretary at Alterna, providing leadership to the legal and compliance group as the chief legal and compliance officer. She leads an eight-member team of law - yers and compliance officers located in Toronto and Ottawa. Since 2014, she has built the legal and compliance function and transformed it into one that serves "as an invaluable partner to its business clients," wrote Dina Vardouniotis, senior vice presi - dent and chief marketing officer at Alterna, in her nomination of Thouin. "During a transformative time at Alterna, Alena brings a critical perspective to the table that is rooted in her legal expertise but also highly balanced with a solid business acumen," said Vardouniotis. "She manages complexity and ambiguity exceptionally well, bringing an innovative approach to solving problems and tackling opportunities." For example, Thouin was involved in the launch of a major digital offering across the country with "innovative retail banking solutions in a heavily regulated sector," managing both fed - eral and provincial considerations. She was part of implementing "me-to- me" payments, which was part of the launch of Alterna's online banking service. "We have had our banking licence for over 15 years and have been a financial in - stitution for over 100 years, but in the last couple of years, there was a strategy put forward to increase our online presence so the online banking initiative was around launching the online, everyday banking package for consumers," Thouin says. While the technology existed to make it happen, the complicated piece for Thouin and her team was the compliance portion. They sat down with the technology and product development team at Alterna and came up with a solution. "One of the ways we wanted to differentiate ourselves from others was to allow new clients coming from other financial institutions to transfer their funds easily when they make a choice to join Alter - na. One of those was with me-to-me transfer — a technology process where you can take money and transfer to [an] Alterna account. It sounds simple, but in the past, it was not something easily achievable. The compliance piece was tricky, but we hammered out a pro - cess that would still be compliant with regula- tory requirements and in a way others haven't been able to get there yet," she says. Thouin sees technology as the path to- ward providing improved service both in- ternally and externally. "Within my team, we're very focused on using technology to enhance our ability to provide services. I have both compliance and legal teams and both are very focused in making sure we are using technology as a tool to make ourselves better business partners and a more effective and efficient service," she says. When it came time to improve the orga - nization's vendor management process to make it more efficient the first question was could it be automated? After doing some cost-benefit analysis, it was decided to build out the existing system to make it work for the team. "She has managed to transform a perfunc - tory cost function into a forward-thinking team of individuals," said Vardouniotis. "She created, built and transformed the legal department into a valuable play- er in all cross-functional organizational initiatives." IH Leading with technology in a new legal department By Jennifer Brown Category: Law Department Leadership Department size: Small Company: Alterna Savings and Bank Alena Thouin, general counsel and corporate secretary at Alterna Savings and Bank. RAMESH PURADCHITHASAN

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