It’s only been three months since it officially merged with AXA, but already AMP general counsel and company secretary Brian Salter is looking at a legal panel review. AMP and AXA Asia Pacific officially merged on April 1 this year, creating in the process a A$15bn company set to challenge the country’s ‘big four’ banks.

Salter, who was the existing general counsel at AMP, says he will be undertaking a thorough review of external legal providers during the next six months with the aim of creating a new panel before December 31. “One of the things I want to do through this process is examine and challenge the way we have approached our panel and the way AXA has approached its panels in order to come up with the best solution,” said Salter.  The makeup of AMP’s panel tended toward the top and second tier, national and international law firms, whereas AXA’s approach has been for relatively low value, low impact work to move to low cost providers. “I want to challenge the philosophical underpinnings of the panels,” he told ALB. 
 

Both AXA and AMP had approximately seven law firms on each of their panels, and Salter will be looking to cull the combined number of firms the new entity deals with.  “I’m not looking for a panel of 14, but I think seven is unrealistic,” he said. The AMP panel has been in its current form for over 10 years according to Salter.

A review of the New Zealand legal providers will not be occurring at this point in time according to Salter as the AMP panel was only established last year, however, at some point in the future he intends to turn his attention to establishing a combined panel there as well.