Legal team embraces digitalization as it services the business
Despite the challenges of remote work and a rapidly evolving business landscape amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, Hina Latif continues to initiate new ways for her legal department to support the organization and boost business while working more efficiently.
“The pandemic crisis gave the legal team and the whole business the opportunity to adapt to a new normal and to demonstrate our agility, our resilience and our extreme ownership of everything that we’re tasked with, to ensure the collective success of our business,” says Latif, who holds the title of vice president, general counsel, corporate secretary, and diversity leader at Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Canada Corporation.
In conjunction with other business areas, the legal department at the Mississauga, Ont.-based global financial services giant had to devise new procedures and documentation to enable the company to support customers who are seeking to defer payments due to pandemic-induced financial concerns. They also came up with tailored solutions for dealers.
Latif’s team also demonstrated its agility by initiating a new system for processing customer contracts without the need for wet ink signatures. The timing was ideal, Latif says, as it enabled them to put contracts in place at a time of remote work.
“This moves us closer to the golden goal of the complete digitalization of the business,” she says. Latif is also working on implementing a new document management system which will allow her team to manage contracts more effectively and to maintain easily accessible audit trails for documentation. Another goal for 2021 is to find ways to utilize data to increase efficiency and to become even more digitalized within the legal team.
In her role, which she has held since June 2018, Latif is responsible for providing timely, effective legal advice to both Mercedes-Benz Financial and the company’s Daimler Truck Financial brand, and to minimize legal risk for both brands. She also oversees matters related to HR, privacy and compliance and works closely with external counsel to ensure services are cost-effective. She collaborates with her peers on the executive leadership team to devise and implement corporate strategy which relates to customers, dealers and employees.
Maintaining a collaborative workspace and positive team spirit while her team works remotely has been a priority for Latif throughout the pandemic crisis. The team adapted rapidly to a remote environment and they remain connected through regular Microsoft Teams meetings, phone calls and texts to ensure camaraderie and good mental health. In addition to staying in touch as a team, Latif also stresses the importance of legal departments staying connected with their internal clients in order to remain empathetic to the changing needs of the business.
The legal team comprises just five members, including an assistant general counsel and a new junior counsel who joined the team in July 2020 and was successfully onboarded entirely remotely. The team also hired its first articling student earlier this month, and is supported by a student intern.
“I do call my team small and mighty,” says Latif, who started her legal career in the U.K. and moved to Toronto in 2003. “For that reason, I want to redefine some of the work being done in the team to make sure we keep working most efficiently and we give everyone the opportunity to work on matters in which they have a particular interest.” She also plans to continue leveraging and furthering the collaborative work culture among her team and their US and German colleagues in 2021.
As diversity leader, Latif co-chairs a recently launched diversity and inclusion working group at Mercedes-Benz Financial which aims to optimally utilize the diversity of thought that comes from the company’s existing diverse and inclusive workforce. The group is working to better understand the different backgrounds and unique perspectives of employees and to use that knowledge to maintain empathy with its also diverse customer base.
“We are lucky to be based in Mississauga, which is a melting pot of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, and talent, even as we continue to work remotely. The leadership team, including myself, are very much focused on continuously enhancing the way in which we engage and empower our already diverse workforce to benefit our strong company culture,” says Latif. “My team and I continue to adopt an agile methodology in servicing our business partners as we work on digitalization initiatives and find new ways to increase efficiencies in proactively servicing our internal clients.”
