It’s time to get to know another member of the MAXIS team! This month we sat down with our Core Legal Director, Harry Hopkins. He discussed his career at MAXIS, the biggest challenges facing the employee benefits (EB) industry from a legal perspective and how AI is impacting the legal work stream. We also found out some highlights from his time here, including our always competitive football tournaments…
The Core Legal team’s main responsibility is advising the business on different legal, regulatory and operational matters. This includes reviewing and negotiating contracts, supporting new initiatives and products, and advising on regulatory issues such as data protection and corporate governance. In other words, I help the business to identify and manage legal risks. Essentially, the Core Legal team enables MAXIS to operate effectively. Our work isn’t always visible straight away, but the majority of the day-to-day business operations at MAXIS depend on the legal support we provide.
Over the years, the Legal team’s responsibilities have grown with the business. When I joined MAXIS in 2017, the Legal team was much smaller, and my role was primarily focused on providing general legal support across day-to-day matters. Today, I have a lot more involvement in strategic projects, stakeholder management and supervising the Core Legal team. I’d say that we used to be seen as a support function, whereas now we’re more of a strategic partner to the rest of the business, supporting on decision making and business planning.
From a legal perspective, one of the biggest challenges facing the employee benefits industry is managing the regulatory complexity of operating across multiple jurisdictions. Every jurisdiction has different rules regarding EB, insurance, employment rights, taxation and data privacy. More and more, multinationals want consistent solutions across their global workforce. So, the challenge for legal teams is helping businesses navigate those differences and deliver products and solutions that are both commercially attractive and compliant.
AI can help us get to the answer more efficiently, but it can’t replace legal judgement. After trialling several AI tools, we found it can free up some of our time so we can focus on strategic legal advice and solve more complex problems. As MAXIS is highly regulated and sits within a relationship driven sector, the value the Legal team brings comes from understanding the commercial context, assessing the risk and providing practical advice to align with our business objectives. AI might help along the way, but the human touch is still key to doing this successfully.
It’s great working in such a diverse organisation and gaining so many different perspectives. Working with colleagues from different countries, cultures, professional backgrounds and areas of expertise means we have a range of experiences to help resolve issues and challenges. If there’s a complex problem to solve, like a new business opportunity or a regulatory issue, having different viewpoints helps to challenge previous assumptions, identify potential risks and develop more innovative and balanced solutions.
My favourite thing about MAXIS is having the opportunity to work with so many different people. It sounds cliché but the people at MAXIS are great. Over the years I’ve worked with such a range of people from all around the world, whether that’s my MAXIS teammates or when partnering with our clients, brokers and local network members. It’s great to learn from each other and makes working together really interesting.
Playing football at the first ever MAXIS MeetUp is definitely a highlight of my MAXIS career! We went to Windsor as a company in 2018 and it was our first big company MeetUp. I remember it being very competitive and unfortunately our US team took home the trophy… luckily, we get to fight for the title every couple of years now, and our members have even got involved with the healthy competition at our MAXIS Global Forum events! It’s always great fun.
Outside of work I love to keep active. I particularly like running, swimming and hiking with my dog.