Federico Suarez Rendon worked at Citi for over 13 years, initially working in Bogota, he moved to London in 2016 where he joined the Global Emerging Markets team helping some of the most relevant Fintech companies and marketplace players such as Stone, Banco Inter, XP or Meli raise capital from European and UK investors.
He has since embarked on an entrepreneurial journey as the founder of Aluna Partners Ltd, a London-based consultancy.
“The skills and knowledge I gained from the Open Banking & Platforms course became handy as we got involved in Open Banking projects and its development in Latin America.”
Federico Suarez Rendon, A former Citi director and founder of consultancy Aluna Partners
CFTE: What motivated you to learn more about Open Banking & Platforms?
Federico: With the evolution of Open Banking came the need to understand the forces that would drive disruption to the way financial services are consumed. During my last 5 years at Citi I started to see how Fintechs perfectly understood the need for consumer centricity – the reason why the disruption occurred in the first place. I also had the opportunity to see the Asian platform model companies such as Ant, which increased my curiosity to understand more deeply the opportunity these new models offered. I soon realised I needed to learn more about the building blocks behind these changes in the Financial Service industry.
CFTE: What were the main takeaways for you? Have you implemented the skills and knowledge acquired through the courses?
Federico: The course allowed me to expand on the opportunity modularity and thus platformisation in the financial service industry creates. Access is defined through usability and usability is enabled by the aggregation of capacities interplaying between different actors. Through the different modules of the course I managed to expand on the possibilities of these new ways of deploying innovation in financial services.
I have had the opportunity to implement the learnings. Interestingly, as I transitioned into a new role as a Founder of Aluna Partners, these tools became handy as we got incrementally involved in projects involving Open Banking and its development in Latin America as a part of a global expansion programme for one of our customers.
The experience of having real operators as teachers brings a whole new meaning to learning. CFTE has taken the time to bring together industry experts who deliver content in an excellent format and in an easy and articulated way.
CFTE: Thank you for your time Federico! Final question, if you had to describe yourself in 3 words, what would they be?
Federico: Curious Learner.
