Challenges of Neobanking in Latam

Juan Pablo Ortega

Co-founder

Rappi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanpabloom/

Juan Pablo Ortega is a Co-Founder of Rappi, Latin America’s largest and fastest-growing on-demand platform and one of the region’s “unicorn” startups. As co-founder, Juan Pablo has played an instrumental role in taking the company from being a small team food delivery startup to becoming one of the region’s largest, multi-functional digital platforms with operations in nine countries and a valuation of ~$3.5B. Juan Pablo started Rappi's rapid international expansion launching Mexico and then built and scaled Rappi’s Payments and Fraud teams and capabilities while architecting the buildout of Rappi’s financial services arm – starting with RappiPay. RappiPay offers Rappi users with a variety of digital payment functionalities including in-store QR payments, P2P, and bill payment services, as well as a contactless-enabled Visa debit card. He is a strong advocate for digital inclusion and has remained focused on evolving Rappi into the first true super-app of Latin America. Juan Pablo received a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Economics from Cornell University and is an FAA Instrument Rated Commercial Pilot. He currently resides in Mexico City.

Mireia Giné

Associate Professor

IESE (moderator)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mireiagine/

Mireia Giné is Associate Professor at the Financial Management Department of IESE. She has a BA in Economics and Master in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University. She received her doctorate from the University of Barcelona after several years at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Mireia specializes in corporate governance, executive compensation, mergers and acquisitions. Currently, she investigates how common ownership of institutional shareholders impacts the corporate decisions of companies in their portfolio. Her research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Review of Finance, Harvard Business Review among other academic journals, as well as in various media (Financial Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, BBC). She has received several international prizes such as the Brattle Prize and has presented her research at prestigious universities and congresses in finance (WFA, EFA, AFA, NBER, etc.). Prior to joining IESE, she worked for more than a decade at The Wharton School as director of Research at Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), a global financial reference platform serving more than 450 academic and financial institutions. Mireia joined the start-up phase and currently she directs the group’s international operations.

Nico Jaramillo

Co-founder & COO

Smash

https://www.linkedin.com/in/najarami/

Nico is co Founder and COO of Smash, a financial wellness app that helps Americans to pay off their credit card debt. Before Smash, Nico was CEO of Global66.com, a payments remittances company operating in 7 Latin American countries. He multiplied the user base 20x from 800 to 16.000 MAU, built a team of 50 people in LATAM, obtained regulatory license to operate prepaid cards in Chile and raised USD 4.2 M in funding. Prior to Global66, Nico was Co-Founder & Head of Product, Growth and Operations at MACH, the fastest growing Chilean payments platform owned by Bci bank, which reached more than 1M users in less than 12 months. Nico started his career in banking at Bci bank, where he led strategic plans in the SMEs and entrepreneurship area as the VP’s assistant of the division. Nico holds an MBA from IESE, and an Industrial Engineer degree from PUC Chile.

Thiago Dias

VP Fintech Strategy and Labs, LAC

MasterCard

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thiagordias/

With almost 20 years building his career on financial and technology industry, mostly as part of Cards and Payments teams, previously working for Banco Itaú and Banco Santander, Thiago joined Mastercard 5 year ago when managed Merchants Business Development. In 2018, Thiago joined Business Expansion and Partnerships Team when he had the opportunity to get in contact with Brazilian innovation ecosystem and engaged with VC´s, accelerators, incubators and other Corporate Programs, while onboarding new issuers and acquirers supporting the Fintech segment growth. His current role is defining and executing on the strategic priorities for the region, focusing on the six key Fintech Markets – Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile to protect our “partner of choice” position with Fintechs. He is responsible for Mastercard Accelerate and Fintech Express in the region, working on improving and enhancing our onboarding experience, relationship and level of innovation offered to our customers and partners, promoting internal transformation to serve better.