Sergio Karlezi of Banco de Chile: When the financial and digital worlds cross paths

“Your success will be your people, and you should have the peace of mind to delegate and trust that they will do everything well.”

Sergio Karlezi

When digital meets finance

“We had to start making decisions, with very limited information and right away to keep everything working,” said the Treasury Department manager of Chile’s largest bank. “We had our hands up in the air, wondering what superhero to call on to save us.”

According to the executive, that was the most impactful moment of his 25 years in finance, during which he experienced situations such as multiple NASDAQ crises, earthquakes, strikes, the September 11 attacks and the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of this makes the job very challenging,” says the industrial civil engineering graduate of the University of Santiago de Chile.

“The day of the cyberattack we had to innovate and improvise immediately, and were able to keep everything working thanks to a team that knew what they were doing, despite being faced with a situation that didn’t come with a protocol or any instructions on how to deal with it,” he passionately relates from his office in the Chilean capital.

Compared with other crises that he has had to overcome, this one was unique because nobody else was affected by it at the same time. As an institution, they had to face it alone, and even though the process was long, there was a great deal of satisfaction in successfully keeping everything working. “In finance, you face something new every day, and you have to be prepared for any surprise,” he says.

Gaining experience

However, it was no coincidence that Karlezi was able to overcome a challenge like this one. The path that led him to this core position at the Bank of Chile started from the bottom, serving coffee. He spent time working in FX, derivatives or fixed-income instruments, which gave him the ability to see things differently because he knows his bank from the inside out.

“It’s a continuous learning process. You have to see how the world changes and adapt. I’ve been lucky to always have someone smart at my side along the way,” he adds.

Having worked in the bank’s different areas also makes it easier for him to delegate work and empower people. “When your career is in a single sector, in my case finance, you try to pass on your knowledge by example.”

He recommends always being empathic with team members and honestly caring about them. “Your people are the foundation of your success. You have to be able to delegate work without worrying and trust that they will do a good job,” he recommends.

“You spend most of your life at work, so have a good time! To do that, you have to create an environment where people come to work happy, because if that’s the case, you have more affection, and if you have more affection, things are going to go well,” he assures.

A proponent of inclusiveness and diversity, Karlezi’s team has members with different professional backgrounds and personalities. “Having other viewpoints is valuable. I love diversity and work with people who are 25, 30, 50 or 55 and from different universities,” he says.

This perspective is not just a result of his career path but also his personal life experience. When he was in university, he considered working at a factory or a mine, and was a fan of math and history, but one day he did an internship at the Bank of Chile. “They told me to stay and I stayed.”

From a family of Croatian immigrants, his university studies began in Venezuela, at a school that he describes as “somewhat elitist,” but when he came to Chile, he continued his degree at a public university. “It was a life experience that let me compare both worlds and taught me to see all sorts of realities, which helped to shape who I am,” he adds.

The relevance of the digital world

Even though the cyberattack showed him an unpleasant part of the digital world, Karlezi says that if he had not ended up working in finance, he would have loved to work in technology.

“I’m a huge Apple fan and admire Steve Jobs because he was behind all of those changes. I lived in the United States when the iPod came out, and it changed my life because I could listen to music while commuting from Connecticut to Manhattan every day,” he recalls.

“The world of technology fascinates me, plus it’s very similar to finance.”

With regard to banking, he says that it has a lot of room to grow and innovate in the field of digitalization, especially in terms of subjects such as quality of service. “That’s because I think that banking should be customer-focused,” he argues.

“Today we have services like ApplePay or Google Pay, applications that manage much larger amounts of money in their checking accounts than a bank, so banks have to adapt to this change,” he suggests.

He believes that banking should focus on service innovation rather than simply product innovation. “We are really good at lending out money and taking care of our customers’ deposits; we have the right products which are tried-and-true, fully developed and operational. So, you have to sell these products in a way that makes more sense for your customers,” he stresses.

The current situation, in which the confinement caused by COVID-19 has triggered multiple years’ worth of digital adoption, has highlighted the importance of the technology industry and that practically there are no more borders. Banking has to learn this lesson as well,” he says.

“Who will want to go to the bank in a few years? I go to the bank because I work there, but I do all of my personal operations on applications. There is the element of habit, because lots of people like to go to the bank, but 15 years from now, the people who are 20 now are going to be 40, and they will be completely digitalized,” he warns.

Face-to-face communication is better

Karlezi says that even though communication today is carried out mainly over platforms like Instagram or Facebook, society will eventually go back to direct contact and personal communication.

“I would tell young people today to maintain a balance and to continue to have direct communication, because when you look someone in the eyes, everything is different. Sharing problems while looking at one another is much more effective.”

In a position like his, staying informed is essential, but to do so, he avoids social media. “There are too many judgements; you read a news story and other people are commenting on it, and I don’t have time for that. The information on social media is based on judgments and opinions rather than facts,” he says.

“I have no doubt that I’m missing out on a lot of things going on (on social media), but to stay informed about what’s relevant to me, I prefer to use digital news media. My iPad is filled with subscriptions such as the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Mercury and other non-biased media, such as Bloomberg. That way I eliminate other people’s comments.”

For people just starting their career, Karlezi recommends being bold enough to make decisions, do new things, play, innovate and not be afraid. “It makes you stronger. That is why you have to do it and go through the process. If you want to take a risk, take it! Later on, when you’re 58 with five kids and have to pay tuition, then you’ll have to be more careful with your money,” he says.

The executive also highlights that these experiences help to create skills that are highly valued on the job market today. “Talent in areas like math or technology is purchased like a commodity. On the other hand, soft skills are created through training and only develop with time,” he stresses.

His advice for new generations is to be clear about what they want, and to look for a career in which they think they will be comfortable: “If you like math, that could be some type of engineering; if you like history, something like a lawyer. What’s important is that it goes well with your talents and personality, otherwise, you’ll get frustrated.”

In short, Karlezi is a technology-lover who knows that the best interactions are achieved through disconnecting from the digital to focus on the human.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Bloomberg.

Bloomberg invited the GETTERS of the financial market in Latin America to share their insightful stories about their careers, their success stories and the challenges they had to face while not only witnessing the development of this fast-paced environment, but actively contributing to its evolution by creating new tools, sharing best practices and inspiring change.