Organisational Change
Vergara discusses his experience implementing a wide range of technologies for the legal department at Scotiabank Chile and shares his thoughts on the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence.
I would say that our legal team is more advanced than other legal teams because the whole bank is making efforts in the area of technology. There are other financial institutions and other companies in other areas that are behind us – sometimes in a very dramatic way – because they don’t, in their businesses, feel that there is an urgency in making the whole business digital. So, obviously, we have an advantage in that area. We also have an advantage because we are an international company. But, on the other hand, sometimes small companies and new companies have an advantage because they start with digital. For us, we are advanced, but sometimes you have to change the habits of people who have several years in the industry – that they have to now learn how to become digital. That’s a difficult issue. Again, we are better in comparison with a lot of other legal teams, but I would say that smaller companies and start-up companies – their legal teams are probably more advanced than us.
Mainly, we use external providers that develop commercial products for the legal industry in Chile. We have different systems: one in the dispute resolution area called Case Tracking, to review the status of your case in the courts. It’s software that is based on cloud computing technology. That provides you with several functionalities that allow you to track and manage your cases and prepare reports, and so on and so forth. It’s a very friendly software, and it’s available for any company or any lawyer and in other Latin American countries, and it’s been very useful for us.
