Zein El Hassan is a partner in the national Finanical Services Team based in Sydney. He has over 30 years’ experience in top tier Australian and international law firms and as a consulting partner of an international consulting firm.
Zein advises banks, wealth managers, super funds, platforms, financial advice licensees and life, general and private health insurers on all aspects of their governance and legal and regulatory requirements.
He is known as an innovator in digital advice and AI risk management and as a strategic adviser to boards and senior management. He is technically proficient as well as commercially focused and is known as a safe pair of hands in relation to the management of transactions, regulatory reform projects as well as regulatory investigations and remediations.
Expertise
Zein’s expertise includes:
- Licensing and regulatory supervision of banks, insurers, super funds and financial advice licensees
- Product design, development, marketing and distribution
- Legal risk management relating to the design, training, implementation and supervision of new technology, including digital financial advice and data driven AI models used to generate customer insights and customer engagement
- Corporate governance, individual accountability and the resourcing and outsourcing arrangements between related entities
- Mergers, divestments and restructures of banks, insurers and super funds
- Strategic alliances, distribution partnerships and white labelling arrangements with third party distributors (including airlines, supermarkets and associations)
- Regulatory incidents, investigations and customer and operational remediation, as well as independent reviews of matters arising from regulatory investigations
Recent Projects
- Advised on the development of regulatory guardrails for the management of compliance and misconduct risk for a major bank relating to AI use cases across its retail, business and institutional banking divisions.
- Advised a wealth manager on the design of its digital advice offering in Australia, as well as a comparative review of financial advice regulation across various jurisdictions across the globe.
- Lead adviser on the review of four market leading digital financial advice tools implemented by a leading Australian financial institution.
- Legal due diligence as part of the merger of two customer-owned insurers.
- Lead adviser on two potential merger transactions with combined FUM of $20B.
- Lead adviser on the successful merger of two industry super funds to create a $125B super fund in the education sector.
- Advised on the corporate governance restructure of an international financial services conglomerate, including the application of the Financial Accountability Regime.
Professional Memberships/ Accreditation & Activities
- Recognised lawyer – Legal 500: named as head of Financial Services Team in Law Firms to watch
- Recognised lawyer – Chambers: Asia-Pacific Guide 2024 – Superannuation and Financial Services Regulation
- Recognised lawyer – Best Lawyers: recognised since 2013 in the ‘Best Lawyers’ list for Australia for financial institutions, funds management, investment funds and superannuation
- Recognised lawyer – Business Today Lawyer Awards 2023: Top 10 Superannuation lawyers – November 2023
Sector
- Financial Services ,
Services
location
Sydney
Thinking
