We are joined by José Murillo, Chief Analytics Officer at Grupo Financiero Banorte, Mexico's second largest financial group and also the most profitable one pre-pandemic.

José had a long tenure at Mexico’s Central Bank, where he worked at the research department. Around 7 years ago, he joined Banorte and established the Analytics Business Unit. His efforts delivered profits equivalent to 46x the cost  just within the first year and almost 250x their cost last year. During his time there, he has helped the bank go from the fourth to the second largest financial group in Mexico, surpassing companies like Grupo Santander and CitiBank.

Quotes:

• "The idea was to build this data science team and I think it was a blessing in disguise at the time, in the sense that they funded the group, but I think there were still some doubts of what would be the yield of bringing people different from what the group used to have. They said "Yes, we are going to fund it but in a year time you need to deliver 10x your cost. It seemed quite steep because for a traditional business they were asking 3x the cost. Long story short, within the first year we delivered 46x the cost and last year we were close to 250x our cost."
• "We were built to deliver profits and I think that helped us focus on things that were valuable to the organization and to be accepted because we were bringing value."
• "I’ll be honest, I was a bit overwhelmed when they told me that I needed to make 10x my cost in a year and I was a bit reluctant to accept the challenge. My boss told me ‘you’re not going to have a problem, just go and look at the amount of resources we have on the credit card business. You’ll be fine.’"

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Read the full episode summary here: Ep 149

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