Give us a Break – Stop Legislating

Isabel Charraz , Country Counsel Portugal and Greece, Citibank Europe Plc
Tiago Moreira, Partner, Vieira de Almeida & Associados, SP R.L.
Pedro Carita, International Private Banker, ABANCA

This paper aims to provide an illustration of how a complex process of excessive legislating has significant impacts on the banking and financial sector. We all know that following the 2008 financial crisis, the banking and financial sector is now among the most heavily regulated industries. The 2008 financial crisis may have been caused by deregulation in the financial industry, but what about now? We have witnessed an onslaught of legislation, as if this could be the answer to catching any flaws in the financial system. With this paper, we seek to provide different perspectives on how excess regulation can have a negative impact on the banking and financial sector’s business, on its ability to rapidly adapt its technologies to new developments and on financial stability as a whole. We also question how small banks, such as national or even international banks, which lack human resources and strive to reduce employee costs, will manage to survive the hurricane of legislation and comply with all its requirements. In view of increasingly demanding regulatory reporting requirements, their alignment with national and local specifications and interpretations must also be considered. National authorities and local governments are always tempted to add a little more “spice”, further complicating the transposition processes and causing the non-uniformization of requirements between countries, what we may call “the big mess”. For international banks with a global presence, this represents a big challenge, particularly when a horizontal transposition of a given requirement is demanded in the countries where they operate. The three “visionaries” whose views are presented here come from three different fields of work, one is a general in-house counsel at an international bank, the other a partner at a law firm and the third a private banker with more than 24 years of experience in the banking industry.

Read full paper Subscribe to the IICJ
Regulation Banking & Finance March 2021 Vol.14, No. 54, Winter 2021

Isabel Charraz

More

Isabel Charraz joined Citibank in 2003, joining Legal and Compliance Department as Legal and Compliance Officer. In December 2007, she was appointed Consumer Legal Head launching the Retail Business and Internet Channel for credit cards acquisition in Portugal. In July 2009, she was appointed General Counsel and Compliance and Control Head and Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Officer (AMLCO) until 2014. She is the Data Privacy Officer since 2009. She has a degree in Law, a Pos-graduation in Banking and Securities Law, a Pos-graduation in Capital Markets, Banking and Insurance Law and a Pos-graduation in Public Companies. In 2016 she has included in the Legal 500`s GC Power-list for Iberia as “One of the most innovative lawyers in Portugal”. In 2018 for the 2nd time in a row she was included in the “GC Legal500 Power List Iberia 2018. Last In 2019 CEP Portugal Legal team won an award as best Banking and Finance legal team in Iberia awarded by Iberian Lawyer. In 2020 she was included in the list of the one of the most 60 inspiring women in the legal sector in the Iberian Peninsula society by Iberian Lawyer.

Tiago Moreira

More

Tiago Correia Moreira is a partner from the Banking & Finance team of Vieira de Almeida & Associados, SP R.L. where he has been working for the past 15 years. Tiago’s advice covers a wide range of banking and financial related matters, also leading the Fintech multidisciplinary team at VdA. He has also been working with Citibank’s Portugal legal team since the very beginning of his career. Tiago is also a Magister Juris from the Oxford University (Exeter College) and is regularly invited to teach in Portuguese Law Universities having written several articles on banking topics.

Pedro Carita

More

Pedro Carita has been working in the Banking Industry for the past 24 years and nowadays he’s an International Private Banker in the Spanish financial group ABANCA. He has worked at Deutsche Bank, Barclays and the Portuguese bank Millennium BCP. He has a Master in Finance, a degree in Management and he’s post graduated in Financial Markets. He is regularly invited to write some articles in professional magazines in the last years and wrote a thesis about Financial Literacy in 2016.

Regulation Banking & Finance March 2021 Vol.14, No. 54, Winter 2021