Financial Institutions
Industry leading expertise in the financial sector
Advising the biggest players in the financial industry
Within the quickly moving financial sector, you need a team that can help you stay ahead of the challenges that banks, insurances and other financial institutions face. Growing or changing regulations affecting the industry require an increased focus on compliance. The large variety of competitors, coupled with changes in consumer behaviour, demand the development of innovative products by all market players.
We are familiar with the modern technological environment and you benefit from our experience in advising both traditional financial institutions and unregulated FinTech players on digitalisation matters. Due to our multi-practice approach, we not only ensure your legal compliance and the legal viability of trailblazer projects but also safeguard your business needs and the requirements of the financial industry.
Key experts
What others say about us
“Wolf Theiss has carved out a strong practice advising banks, insurance companies and funds alongside other financial services institutions on real estate, acquisition and infrastructure finance as well as regulatory and contentious matters, while […] also handling an increasing amount of fintech-related work.”
– The Legal 500
What makes our team the best law firm for you?
Our regional, integrated firm offers distinct advantages, spanning the full spectrum of legal services.
- An established international law firm with 60+ years of experience in Austria and CEE/SEE
- A fully integrated team of jurisdiction-specific qualified lawyers across our offices in 13 countries.
- Collaboration and innovation across multidisciplinary teams and offices
- Excellent client satisfaction – responsive, client-oriented, and consistent
- Experience with complex and cross-border matters covering the full spectrum of legal services
- Knowledge and expertise to add value to deals across industries
Areas of specialisation
Insurance & reinsurance
With extensive experience in the insurance sector, you can rely on a team which is a market leader in the CEE/SEE region. You benefit from our strong relationships with regulatory bodies, local insurance business associations and market players across the region. Whether you are a national or international company, we can advise you on all types of insurance agreements, provide coverage opinions, act as monitoring counsel and represent you at all levels of court and administrative proceedings. Our financial legal experts are especially familiar with Warranty & Indemnity products, D&O and E&O matters, casualty and fidelity insurance, life policies, as well as professional liability.
Payment services
One of the fastest developments in the wake of the digitalisation of the financial sector is the emergence of alternative payment services. We can advise you as credit institutions, non-banking financial institutions, e-money issuers as well as other payment service providers on licensing aspects, launching and structuring of your products to comply with national and international regulations (such as PSD 2) as well as on consumer protection aspects.
Banking regulatory
We support you on all regulatory issues related to the establishment, licensing and operation of branches, subsidiaries and services on a local and cross-border basis, including regulations such as Basel III and Basel IV.
M&A
Advising on M&A transactions in the financial sector has long been one of our key strengths. As one of the largest corporate and M&A teams across CEE/SEE, we can facilitate deal introductions and proactively work to find solutions and consensus to ensure that your transactions are successful. You can rely on our team of highly specialised transaction, regulatory and industry lawyers across our 13 offices who would be proud to work alongside you on your most important and challenging transactions and issues.
Data protection & information security
Keeping transparency and customers’ trust with regards to data is a key issue in the financial sector. With more innovation and more virtual break-ins come new, stricter regulations, which means staying up to date with your privacy policies and data security is more important than ever. We are here to help you do that while respecting your business needs with an eye toward your continued success. We advise you on the compliance of products and transactions, assist in filing necessary notifications to authorities and help to set up or review your internal procedures such as (cross-border) data transfers or Incident Response Plans for data breaches.
Get in touch
When you need an international team with extensive experience, Wolf Theiss is your right partner to support your business goals through profound legal practice.
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Wolf Theiss - Leading Lawyers in CEE&SEE
Accessibility Statement
- www.wolftheiss.com
- 30 September 2023
Compliance status
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability. To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more. This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs. Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments. If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following emailScreen-reader and keyboard navigation
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:- Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
- Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Disability profiles supported in our website
- Epilepsy Safe Mode: this profile enables people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures that result from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.
- Visually Impaired Mode: this mode adjusts the website for the convenience of users with visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.
- Cognitive Disability Mode: this mode provides different assistive options to help users with cognitive impairments such as Dyslexia, Autism, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
- ADHD Friendly Mode: this mode helps users with ADHD and Neurodevelopmental disorders to read, browse, and focus on the main website elements more easily while significantly reducing distractions.
- Blindness Mode: this mode configures the website to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and websites must be compatible with it.
- Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired): this profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Additional UI, design, and readability adjustments
- Font adjustments – users, can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
- Color adjustments – users can select various color contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap color schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds, with over 7 different coloring options.
- Animations – epileptic users can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.
- Content highlighting – users can choose to emphasize important elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.
- Audio muting – users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire website instantly.
- Cognitive disorders – we utilize a search engine that is linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
- Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions.