Julio Gómez

Madrid — Market entry and expansion for Fintech and RegTech in Iberia

• Regulatory compliance: Adapting client processes to local and international regulatory frameworks, AML6 & KYC, PSD2 SCA, eIDAS, GDPR and SEPBLAC, clearing compliance ahead of launch.
• Regulatory framework: Advising identity-verification and electronic-signature providers on Spanish and Portuguese market entry under AML6, PSD2 SCA, eIDAS and GDPR, adapting their compliance positioning to each market's requirements.
• Board advisory: Advising founders and boards of regulated companies, translating strategic priorities into action plans with named owners, metrics, and monthly review cadence.
• Project ownership: Leading projects end to end across licensing, alliances, regional expansion and vendor selection, working inside the client's governance and reporting lines.
• Iberian market entry: Steering international providers through Iberian market entry and expansion, from initial positioning to signed contracts with first-tier banking, insurance, and telco brands.
• Institutional relations: Signing agreements with public bodies including Madrid Innovation Lab, the City of Madrid, and Business Helsinki, positioning the firm as an entry point for foreign investors.
• Vendor-agnostic advisory: Advising C-level buyers in banking, insurance, and telco on technology modernisation, benchmarking competing solutions before recommending one, vendor-agnostic throughout.

Madrid — Market launch in 90 days, break-even by month 30, EUR 20M mandate

• Statutory representation: Held the deed of representation for the Spanish company as its appointed head, signing alone before the notary, the tax agency, the commercial register and the banks from incorporation onward.
• Anti-money-laundering programme: Owned anti-money-laundering responsibility from launch, commissioning the manual, the risk self-assessment and the internal control body with external counsel and appointing the representative before the supervisor.
• Banking relationships: Opened and held the operating bank accounts of a Nordic-owned lender across BBVA, Santander and CaixaBank, clearing each bank's due diligence on the parent, the source of funds and the activity before the first disbursement.
• Country launch: Owned a €10M+ project end to end, standing up a 25-person operation and taking the business live in the Spanish market in under 90 days.
• Scaling and leadership: Took the operation from zero to monthly operating break-even by the third year, mobilising 60+ people across internal teams, vendors, financial partners, and regulators.
• P&L accountability: Held full P&L responsibility under weekly management control, reducing costs, driving origination and containing default and fraud, deciding on the data.
• Vendor management: Built the vendor management systems and compliance frameworks governing every critical service provider relationship across the operation.

Helsinki — Part-time post alongside the MSc thesis

• Board support: Supported the board and senior leadership on strategic planning, governance documentation, and compliance while running daily incubator operations.
• Operational efficiency: Managed campus operations end to end, owning space maintenance and safety alongside vendor and university-administration relationships.
• Founder mentoring: Advised and mentored founders on growth, international expansion, and network building, delivering weekly sessions on self-authored training materials.
• Process re-engineering: Re-engineered the Lab's operating processes, reducing administrative load and reinvesting the recovered hours into direct startup support.
• Programme design: Redesigned the operating framework of the Business Lab's incubation programme, strengthening the support delivered to campus startups and scale-ups.
• Ecosystem management: Built and managed service provider and ecosystem partner relationships while coordinating multicultural, cross-functional teams inside the incubator.

Madrid — Three-month mandate, launched in 83 days and handed over

• Business launch: Launched Spain's first cash loan service inside metro stations, driving the project from company incorporation to first loan granted in 83 days.
• Regulatory authorisation: Secured Metro de Madrid's authorisation to operate cash loans inside its stations, clearing a station-safety standard no lender had met before and setting the Spanish precedent for physical credit distribution.
• Infrastructure design: Designed the secure transaction infrastructure, developing and installing cash stands to the safety standards mandated inside the stations.
• Point-of-sale verification: Connected the mobile points of sale over 4G cellular networks and deployed AML and KYC systems with iPad biometric verification and real-time affordability scoring.
• Cash logistics: Designed and supervised the daily cash logistics network, coordinating deliveries station by station under the operator's mandated security protocols.
• Hiring and training: Built the project's 22-person workforce from scratch in three months, owning hiring, training, conflict management, and the orderly wind-down at mandate close.

Barcelona — Rescue of a stalled operation carrying EUR 1.2M in past-due loans

• Collections strategy: Rebuilt the collections waterfall across the 30, 60 and 90+ day buckets, lifting recovery by 42% in six months and cutting the cost-to-recovery ratio to 3.6%.
• Governance design: Wrote the operating manuals and internal control frameworks for a business grown without documented processes, training the team off these and the governance guides.
• Shareholder reporting: Answered to the shareholder and the parent on a weekly cadence covering recovery, cost and portfolio risk exposure, correcting the rescue's course week by week.
• Banking partnerships and outsourcing: Negotiated the banking partnerships required to operate and outsourced accounting, HR, legal and tax, focusing the internal team on recovery and service.
• Risk mitigation: Improved the scoring model via bureau data integration from Asnef Equifax, Instantor, and Experian, directly lifting the repayment ratio and the operation's P&L.
• Financial product launches: Directed the development and launch of financial products tailored to the Spanish market and compliant with local regulation, leading the teams behind each release.

Madrid — Relocation of the group's operations from Finland to Spain

• Gold, silver and luxury inventory controls: Worked inside the group's in-store secured-lending business on the inventory controls for pledged gold, silver, diamonds, exclusive watches and luxury goods and on the compliance procedures around their custody and release.
• Operational relocation: Relocated customer service and collections operations from Finland to Spain with full continuity and minimal disruption, standing up the receiving operation from scratch.
• Operations design: Designed the European operations centre in Poland to centralise the group's customer service and back office across the Schengen area, selecting a 1,000-square-metre site, its floor plan and its service providers.
• Vendor negotiation: Renegotiated vendor and partner pricing and fees, delivering 30% in operating savings while maintaining continuity and upgrading contracted service levels.
• Workforce planning: Wrote the policies coordinating 20+ staff across IT, customer service, call centre, and collections, distributing load by task triage rather than by function.
• Channel digitisation: Transferred operating lessons between the in-store secured-lending business and the online credit brand, digitising the physical channel without losing the walk-in customer.
• Online unit operations: Promoted in 2014 to lead operations for the online unit, a business generating €2.9M in revenue, serving 44,000 customers, and managing a €16.5M loan portfolio.

Helsinki — Operations core of one of Europe's first fully digital lenders

• Project direction: Ran the outsourcing of cash disbursement, bank verification, scoring, and media acquisition as a single project, tracking and measuring each provider.
• Operational set-up: Stood up the Madrid operation from its first year, establishing the service centre, the collections team, the CRM, and customer communications.
• Product launch: Executed product launch plans across Spain, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, adapting each service generation to local rules and customers.
• Internationalisation: Ran parallel internationalisation projects spanning payment product development, service outsourcing, and the loan application interface redesign.
• Distributor activation: Built the partner networks that grew to carry €800,000 in monthly sales, activating online and physical distributors across the market one by one.
• Multi-site rollout: Held cross-functional, multi-site teams to their dates through a simultaneous rollout across the Helsinki offices and the Madrid operation.
• BNPL payments pilot: Directed the point-of-sale deferred payments (BNPL) pilot, from product design and technical implementation to training the staff in the INTERSPORT stores.