Features Banking

Just a little over 30 years old as a financial institution—and only seven of those as a validated bank—Grupo Financiero BASE is downright young when it comes to the banking industry: Its competitors and contemporaries have many more decades, very often centuries, of experience behind them. But youth also means there is ample opportunity for […]

Banco Panameño de la Vivienda (Banvivienda) had been servicing Panamanian Mortgages for 25 years when it expanded to become a universal bank around 2006. Today the bank has more than 55,000 customers, six branches in Panama City, another six in surrounding towns, as well as dozens of ATMs and online banking centers around the country. […]

A job offer like this comes around maybe once in a career—if you’re lucky. Having just turned 30, Daniel Pérez -Umaña understood, both professionally and personally, the weight and stakes of what was in front of him: a job as general counsel for BAC Credomatic, one of Central America’s largest banks. And yet, he hesitated […]

Heads down, earbuds in, fingers forever scrolling the latest story or social media feed, our cellphones have become the most powerful tools in our daily lives—even an extension of ourselves. But getting our phones to recognize us as individuals? Until recently, that was the stuff of science fiction. According to one of its top attorneys, […]

Rare may be the person among us who’s not on a first-name basis with someone incarcerated. At any given moment, there are around 2.3 million Americans being detained in a local, county, state or federal facility. Whether it be for a short stay in jail or a long stretch in prison, some kind of positive […]

From the black swivel chairs to the gaggle of suits across the long wooden table, the conference room looks a lot like those John Vardaman frequented during his days as an assistant deputy chief at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Only this time, his audience isn’t fellow lawyers, but bank executives eager to learn […]

Often, legal departments among competing businesses are separated by at least a polite distance. But if there’s a greater good to be pursued, some teamwork would seem in order. That sentiment guides Jorge Alfredo Marroquín Cabrera in his new capacity as corporate and regulatory legal manager of Banco G&T Continental, as he forges relationships with […]

Karen McDonough gets paid to think about retirement, all day every day. Not her own, mind you rather the multi-billion-dollar retirement and employee benefits industry that her employer, USI Consulting Group (USICG), caters to. As the chief legal officer explains, the retirement and benefits industry is in a constant state of flux: She and her […]

On a Tuesday afternoon in late October, just months after competing with 4,500 peers to win the 2018 Global Counsel Employment Lawyer of the Year Award, Kate Peterson prefaced her first interview with Vanguard with a confession: She’d come to work in mismatching shoes, and she was just realizing it. Such is the self-effacing way […]

At first glance, there might not seem to be many similarities between working on the family farm and overseeing the legal department of a banking company. But there are indeed, says the personable Kristina Schaefer, who’s done both on the high plains. “My upbringing prepared me very well for banking,” says Schaefer, who for the […]