Partner
and access,
Sangeetha Raghunathan is a corporate partner with a focus on fintech regulatory issues. Sangeetha is a business, product, legal, and compliance strategist for venture-backed, growth-driven, and public companies in fintech, insurtech, and commerce. With significant in-house and government experience, she covers a broad range of areas relevant to technology-driven companies at all stages of development, including banking and mobile payments, information security governance, financing, enterprise risk, blockchain strategy, broker-dealer and Alternative Trading System (ATS) issues, complex commercial contracts, intellectual property, privacy, crowdfunding, e-commerce, M&A, litigation, insurance, advertising, consumer protection, and financial services regulations. She is sought out by companies looking to maximize value and customer service while mitigating financial, commercial, product, and legal risks, particularly in disruptive and unproven industries with unclear and evolving regulatory oversight. Sangeetha is particularly focused on the fintech industry’s potential to fundamentally change the way consumers access, use, and move money, both domestically and internationally. She has significant experience as an in-house attorney operating at the intersection of legal, banking and regulatory compliance. Over the last decade alone, and during a period of significant innovation and evolution for the financial services sector, she held influential leadership roles in the fintech companies Earnin, Indiegogo and SquareTrade, and was focused on e-commerce initiatives as part of Visa’s privacy and data security team. She also served as lead legal counsel for Disney Interactive’s Playdom and Disney Mobile business units, where she set the legal strategy balancing U.S. banking and privacy laws instrumental to their digital wallet, virtual currency and in-app monetization products. Prior to working in-house, Sangeetha served as Deputy Attorney General at the California Attorney General's Office, where she focused on corporate fraud and antitrust issues, including as lead counsel for a multi-state Sherman Act and Cartwright Act price-fixing case against the DRAM technology industry. Her significant financial regulatory experience, combined with her background as a business strategist, provides clients with the practical advice to help them thrive in an evolving regulatory environment. Having negotiated with numerous state and federal regulators and testified for state legislative bodies, she also offers clients a framework for advocacy and collaboration with government agencies.