Rachel Welch-Phillips
ANSA McAL Group
Head of Legal and Compliance for the Banking Sector
Rachel is the Head of Legal and Compliance for the Banking sector of the ANSA McAL Group. She is entrusted with the management and operation of the legal and compliance functions across ANSA Merchant Bank Limited, ANSA Merchant Bank Barbados Limited and ANSA Bank Limited.
ANSA’s banking sector has adopted a Natural Capital approach for advancing and enhancing shareholder value by integrating the concept of nature’s stock of capital (living and non-living resources), and the services they provide, into business decision-making. Rachel will provide legal and compliance support to the ongoing growth and development of the Bank’s natural capital objectives.
Rachel is a banking and finance lawyer trained at an international law firm in London as a solicitor of the senior courts of England and Wales. Upon her return to the Caribbean, Rachel was called to the bar as an attorney-at-law in Trinidad and Tobago as well as an attorney-at-law of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court of Grenada and practised regionally for an international law firm in the Caribbean.
Her enthusiasm for the law is coupled with her passion for corporate sustainability and environmental stewardship having completed a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Policy from Middlebury College in Vermont USA, and a Master of Philosophy in Environmental Policy from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Rachel’s work in sustainable finance includes advising on the Blue Bond for Ocean Conservation issued by the Government of Barbados in September 2022 which unlocked USD $50 million to support marine environment conservation in Barbados, as well as advising the Government of the Republic of Ecuador on their sovereign debt for nature swap estimated to generate approximately USD $323 million for marine conservation in the Galapagos Islands.