Welcome to Hermeneus Legal
Your financial regulatory guide

Services

Legal advice

Financial regulatory practices vary from firm to firm. Hermeneus Legal has a full-scope practice consisting of financial regulatory and legislative advice from advising financial institutions on regulatory limitations and requirements related to their operations and strategy, including regulatory aspects of market access and product development, innovative products and services, licenses, registrations, declarations of no-objection and other regulatory authorisations, financial regulatory law aspects of acquisitions and other financial sector transactions, business conduct requirements, financial crime etc. 

Besides legal advice, Hermeneus Legal also performs the drafting of policies and other internal documentation, review of terms and conditions and contracts in relation to the financial services.

License applications

Financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, investment managers, investment funds and securities brokers, and FinTech companies, such as electronic money institutions, payment services providers, crowdfunding platforms and crypto exchangers, are subject to strict regulation and risk management requirements and therefore licensing is required. Licensing a financial institution in one of the EU member states opens up business opportunities to provide services in all other states of Europe (also known as "EU passsporting"). 

In order to obtain a license a fully completed, high-quality application form with all the required documents enclosed has to be submitted to the relevant supervisor: AFM or DNB. The consideration period will only commence once the application is complete. The quality of the application and the enclosed documents will accordingly influence the timing of the license application procedure. Hermeneus Legal is highly experienced in license applications and assists you with thorough preparation and adequate quality assurance. Maria has a broad and diverse network of lawyer, civil law notaries, risk&compliance experts, and tax consultants, and can therefore quickly involve other expertise if needed. 

Interim solutions

Maria has years of experience in the financial services sector and has been working in very diverse teams and roles. Her experience assists in establishing a seamless fit with your business, ensuring she is ready to ‘hit the ground running’. Maria familiarizes herself easily with the context of the company and represent the interests of her clients in the best possible manner. Maria will act as a flexible freelance legal counsel in your legal team, but is also available as an interim compliance officer as a critical and complementary role in the response to current pressures in the financial services sector. Maria will therefore meet your interim resourcing needs.

The interim solutions of Hermeneus Legal are especially useful under the following circumstances: 

  • temporary replacement of an inhouse lawyer or compliance officer who is on leave for any reason;
  • while the company is looking for a suitable professional to hire on a permanent basis;
  • when the inhouse legal advisors or compliance officers have a temporary work overload; and/or
  • companies that do not have in-house legal advisors and would like to hire a lawyer part-time to oversee their legal and/or compliance affairs.


Training & presentations

During her professional career Maria has given all types of training and presentations, covering a wide range of financial regulatory topics. From truly interactive workshops in small groups to presentations at large financial industry conferences or legal events. Topics you may think of relate to financial regulatory overviews/upcoming legislation, particular PSD2, MiFIDII, MiCA, AIFMD topics, communication with supervisors, AML/CTF/financial crime, and many more.

Benefits of training to employees include increasing productivity, better serving customers, awareness of compliance and ultimately doing better business. Besides the above, Maria provides preparation sessions to day-to-day policymakers to be screened by the regulators AFM and DNB. Maria is happy to discuss the possibilities hands on practical training tailored to the specific needs or your team, key executives and CEO.

 

 Public Affairs

Regulation is complex and constantly shifting; in particular financial regulation. Ensuring that your company understands regulatory implications and remains is therefore essential: not only to mitigate risks but also to realize substantial competitive advantages. By combining regulatory law and public affairs Hermeneus Legal can advise you on strategic policy issues arising from EU and national legislative developments. 

Hermeneus Legal assists you with different aspects of public affairs, like developing a strong public affairs strategy within your organisation, mapping the risk and opportunities of legislative/policy developments, influence upcoming rules & regulations by drafting positions papers or building a profile towards decision-makers, etc.