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00:00:00
00:00:01
Fabrizio Burlando
43 Plays3 months ago
We talk about going from being a structural engineer, to working for the UN in Africa to a 16 year tour of duty at Mastercard to being hired as the CEO of Bancomat.
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Transcript
Introduction to Fabrizio Borlando
00:00:01
Joe Waltman
All right, today we have Fabrizio Borlando. Fabrizio, thank you for joining.
00:00:06
Fab
Joe, thanks a lot for having me, very exciting.
00:00:09
Joe Waltman
All right, first question,
Early Life and Education in Italy
00:00:12
Joe Waltman
refresh your memory. What were you doing before in SEAD and what have you been up to for the last 21 years?
00:00:18
Fab
ah Short question, short answer, no, it's gonna be a long answer. um All right, so maybe it's useful to um remind a little bit where I come from, obviously come from Italy, but I spent the first,
00:00:33
Fab
23 years of my life in the same city, Genoa. It's a very pleasant city in the north of ah Italy. um I did uni there and I developed a bit of urge to visit the world after 23 years in the same place. ah I studied what at the time was ah Not so cool, but now it became very cool. It's sort of ah ah in between engineering and biotechnology with some artificial intelligence, which now would guarantee me probably a couple million bucks just to sign on, but at the time was sort of like edge frontier. So I did a bit of a academics right after, but then I realized I wanted to to see the world. So I,
00:01:22
Fab
I actually moved out and I started my first job in in London.
Career Beginnings in London
00:01:28
Fab
Funny story how I came by. I finished my degree and I ah yeah went on a summer break. So I went visiting a few friends who were studying abroad in Europe. At the time you could buy a ah ticket and travel freely around Europe, late 90s.
00:01:46
Fab
I bought a ticket and I visited a few friends in Belgium, in France. They were all typical student or just graduated, leaving six people in a, in a, in a, in a, in a flat share, um, eating pizza. Then I get to London and, uh, my friend is there with a three bedroom flat, a nice car, and he's like, Hey, this is great. And London is, is booming. You should come here and get a job and everybody will offer you a job. So I said, Oh, that's great.
00:02:15
Fab
So I took it gave me a graduate book um from A to Z at the time email wasn't that developed. So I started typing letters and I basically the first employer that started with A was a company called Arup.
00:02:33
Fab
which I didn't know, to be honest, but it turned out to be a great company, one of the best ah and structural engineering companies out there. They really wanted me, I don't know why, but I i actually started one year after, but sorry, one month after I moved to London and I started to be a structural engineer, which is very different from what I started for, but they they were on ah on a hiring friends, I think, and they and they liked me.
00:02:57
Joe Waltman
How old were you at the time?
00:02:59
Fab
I was 23.
00:03:01
Joe Waltman
Oh, that's great.
00:03:02
Fab
spreadway and And so it starts my, my adventure, my, my English was even worse than, than what it is now. So I could barely survive, but you know, I had to draw at the beginning. So it was fun. It was actually doing building services or more of an electrical engineering stuff. I loved it. Um, I, it was the end of two the end of the nineties. I participated at the building of the Tate Modern in, in London and a few other iconic building.
00:03:33
Fab
A lot of fun, but then it wasn't really for me because I was, ah you know, it was a different kind of engineering. So I moved out and I started doing what many people did at the time.
00:03:45
Fab
Hey, hey, here, here, consulting. Very, very new. I loved it. It's a company called PA Consulting. Pretty good company.
00:03:54
Joe Waltman
Still in London. Still in London.
00:03:55
Fab
In London, yes, yes.
00:03:57
Joe Waltman
Yeah.
00:03:57
Fab
Two years two years three years and a half I moved to PA consulting, staying in London. I did another two and a half years there. I loved it.
Transition to Consulting and MBA
00:04:05
Fab
I wanted to do a bit more strategy consulting and I realized that maybe going to INSEAD or to MBA will help me.
00:04:13
Fab
So I brushed off a bit of French, not that we needed it much. but We all need a third language at INSEAD and then I, and then I resigned and I use all my savings to join you guys at INSEAD, which was great as you all remember. So that was my, my pre-INSEAD around five years all in London. Then second part of the question, I guess it's, ah it's after INSEAD. Well, you know, I kept, kept my promise with myself. I wanted to do strategy consulting and then I,
00:04:48
Fab
Lucky enough, at the time, you might remember it was either strategy consulting or investment banker. and Now it's a little bit different, but at the time I hit the strategy consulting career path and I joined BCG. And I decided that after six and a half years, I would try to go back to Italy. So I joined BCG in in Rome, actually. That's where I moved.
00:05:14
Fab
um It was good, ah but I was very lucky, you know, a lot of lucky things in my career. I was very lucky that I was offered after one year one year on. I was offered one of the best experience
BCG and UN Consulting Experience
00:05:28
Fab
of my life. There was ah sort of an exchange program between BCG and the United Nations. And I was offered to join the UN for almost one year and to do consulting on field in Africa.
00:05:45
Fab
which was very, very different from your usual consulting engagement.
00:05:46
Joe Waltman
Oh cool.
00:05:50
Fab
So I spent the roughly nine months traveling around Africa and seeing the real things. So it it was a combination of helping and supporting some of the very senior leaders in the United Nations, but also doing field work.
00:06:05
Fab
So I worked in 12 different African countries, um including the post-Civil War Angola, ah Mozambique, Sudan, and a lot of those countries. And it was really eye-opening. One thing is to you know hear it in the news. One thing is to be there. It was also very nice um to be able to you know help and support an organization which I which are really
00:06:36
Fab
admired. um You know, there were some more complicated things than others, but really fulfilling part of my career. yeah Then after nine months I had to come back. um I was actually asked whether I wanted to stay, but I decided not to. It's great to do for a bit, but it's a sort of a very different rail, if you want, to do that kind of life. So I ah went back to consulting, which was not the same as before. So I did another three year BCG. ah And then I was at the time that either you decide that you want to be a partner, so you need to suffer for another two, three years, or it's the perfect
00:07:20
Fab
trying to jump out of consulting, having learned a lot, and that's what I decided to do. um So I you know spread the spread the word around. I wanted to do something in the industry, but I really like i like technology. I really like financial services, also oddly enough. and I hear a lot of people saying that, but I enjoy that. I like numbers.
00:07:41
Fab
but also wanted something that was consumer facing and i got very lucky because i got a call from from mastercard the payment company ah which did a lot of the boxes it was very numerical still consumer facing because the cards is the most and payments is the most let's say B2C part of ah of of a bank. it was ah It was a network, so very exciting. There was also decent growth in the industry at the time, and still is.
Role at MasterCard
00:08:15
Fab
So I am i joined MasterCard in 2008, and I've been there for 16 years, ah which was quite of a ride.
00:08:26
Fab
I started helping them during their advisory business. So using my consulting, let's say toolkit, um but moving into into a company.
00:08:39
Fab
So ah we started from scratch an advisory business that then now is
00:08:46
Joe Waltman
Who are you advising or resulting to, the the the partners or the customers of MasterCard?
00:08:50
Fab
the correct, the financial institutions and the the merchants.
00:08:53
Joe Waltman
okay
00:08:54
Fab
We were selling consulting and it was also part of some deals. At the time, it was almost non-existing. Now it's a business that it's a few billion dollars for Mastica.
00:09:05
Fab
So it was fun because I was one of the pioneers, obviously, you know, with other colleagues, but I was the only one in Italy, one of the few in Europe and it was really green pastures.
00:09:15
Fab
So we could do whatever we wanted.
00:09:16
Joe Waltman
Sorry, but backing up, but where is was this job also in Rome, or did did you move somewhere else internally?
00:09:21
Fab
He was in Rome. He was in Rome.
00:09:22
Joe Waltman
Oh, great.
00:09:23
Fab
He was in Rome. I wanted one in Rome. So for the first time after six or seven years, I want to build stability. I was in Rome, but that didn't last long, meaning that the the job lasted longer.
00:09:40
Fab
My stability didn't because after a few years in in Rome, I did well in Italy. So they asked me whether I wanted to do the same for for Europe.
00:09:51
Fab
And then I got the job. In the meantime, I also met my future wife, what would be my future wife. So we decided that that we were both happy for an adventure. She works in a different industry, but still likes to travel. So we moved to France, Paris again for another a year. Then we moved to London. there We moved a little bit to New York.
00:10:20
Fab
So we did a bit of the erratic, instead, if you want, lifestyle. Still with Mastica, still with Advisors, but then moved and rotate jobs for a few years until I ah was a bit um done with the advisory and I wanted a what I called jokes, jokes aside, I called it a real
CEO Role and Strategic Integration
00:10:45
Fab
job. I wanted really there to own the whole thing. So actually I was owning a P&M.
00:10:51
Fab
It was lucky enough. Again, Massek is a great company that gives a lot of opportunity if you go and look for them. It was an acquisition, a company that does prepaid cards. It's a global company, but it was based in close to London. And it wasn't doing super well. They needed somebody who could integrate it well and do a turnaround. So they asked me whether I want to become the CEO.
00:11:17
Fab
of that company after acquisition, which is a great way of really trying to be a CEO with a little bit of a ah safety net around because you're part of a big company.
00:11:27
Joe Waltman
Yeah.
00:11:29
Fab
And that was fantastic. It was the only business going down in ah in a company going up big time. So that that that was fun. I was losing, you know.
00:11:39
Joe Waltman
but Wait, so so it was an existing thing that they brought you into manager or you were starting it from scratch internally?
00:11:44
Fab
No, no, no. It was an acquisition. So they acquired the company.
00:11:46
Joe Waltman
Okay.
00:11:47
Fab
They had acquired a company actually a couple of years back, but it wasn't working super well for a number of reasons. It was a B2C company, Masaka is a B2B2C, so there were a number of reasons it wasn't working very well.
00:12:01
Fab
They said, well, if you want to have it, give it a go. Go ahead and turn it around and help us to integrate. They needed somebody that was willing to do that. And again, it was fun because Masaka was growing like...
00:12:12
Joe Waltman
and and it was sorry Sorry for interrupting, but it was a global thing or a European thing or an Italian thing.
00:12:14
Fab
Sure.
00:12:17
Fab
Global thing, global thing.
00:12:19
Joe Waltman
Okay.
00:12:19
Fab
80% of my revenues came from Asia Pacific. So there was a lot of work.
00:12:24
Joe Waltman
Oh, cool.
00:12:26
Fab
Australia and Japan were my two largest markets. in Australia, Japan, and the UK. The team is around 500 people um globally.
00:12:35
Joe Waltman
Wow. That's a lot of people.
00:12:37
Fab
Half of it was in a lovely town called Peterborough and went out from London. and you know I've seen better weather around but but it's a great team and I still have very good memories of the borough as they call it and then the rest was around the world so I started a bit of a globe trucking at the time um I had started a family so I had the one child and the second one coming up. So my wife was in, was in London and I was traveling. So it was great. Again, I think it's the experience that taught me the most. There were a lot of operational challenges that I never had encountered before in my consulting, PowerPoint crafting business. And, and also it was a, again,
00:13:37
Fab
difficult market because it it was based on FX and at the time Revolut had just disrupted the market offering almost free FX just in time of me taking the job so it was a bit of a be railing from the business model.
00:13:54
Fab
So to carry short, we changed the strategy. and We fully integrated into the rest of MasterCard. We transformed from a B2C company into a white label um prepaid FX cards for banks, which might be a complicated thing to explain.
00:14:15
Fab
But basically, rather than trying to sell cards, we were helping banks to build their own proposition. ah And it was a much safer choice for MasterCard, whose clients are banks anyway.
00:14:27
Fab
So we sort of like brought it back in the business model of MasterCard.
00:14:33
Joe Waltman
but this is and Maybe I'm being a bit self-indulgent here, but this is interesting from the perspective of of of the the previous founders of this company. ah Presumably, they were stayed they stayed on after the acquisition.
00:14:45
Joe Waltman
Sounds like they they weren't very successful. Then they brought you in to replace these guys or gals? Is is that was that what?
00:14:49
Fab
No, no, no, actually this this was ah it's a rather large company. So it was actually, I don't think the founders were were around. It was owned by another, it was owned by another company.
00:14:59
Joe Waltman
Oh, by the time you got there. Okay. Okay.
00:15:02
Fab
It was an asset that they would both my master for for the good reasons, for the good reasons.
00:15:04
Joe Waltman
Okay, okay.
00:15:06
Fab
But then, you know, market dynamics changed. So we had to change the strategy. So it wasn't about, the you know, the people that it was more about ah ah fixing some of the strategic stuff.
00:15:17
Fab
um
00:15:18
Joe Waltman
And how much of this of this new, with without ah you know letting you be overly modest or overly arrogant, how much of this new strategy was was your conception or your your your your your idea or how much of it was sort of the company kind of wanted to go this way and you were brought in just to execute it?
00:15:35
Fab
It's an interesting question. ah it's ah I think the the the reasons why we bought this company were not maybe fully thought through at the time. So by the time we we acquired it, then the rest of there were a few, ah let's say, reorg in Masterhouse. It was a little bit left there with no big direction.
00:16:01
Fab
there's It was a relatively large company, but MasterCard is a lot larger.
00:16:06
Fab
So it wasn't really the focus of of the top management. But it was great for me as a as the training ground to to to learn a little bit about the CEO job.
00:16:06
Joe Waltman
See you.
00:16:17
Fab
um So you know it was me, but it was also a lot of and being the right person, maybe at the right time, and and then changing be the this strategy and the idea.
00:16:30
Fab
so It worked at the end. It also worked because we integrated back into the strategy of MasterCard and i think that was something that the entire management agreed with. um It was actually quite, the thing that I'm most proud of was quite rapid. So usually these large companies have big times and timeframes within two years.
00:16:58
Fab
So we we integrated and we changed the business model. Then after two years, I started to work in a different way. um Then I got to another that call from one of my ah friends and the former boss in MasterCard saying, listen, you know, we're creating a new area for MasterCard based on what you did or we did together in advisors, but much broader offering services, including data analytics, artificial intelligence for protection, a lot of services. Would you like to come and joining as one of the executives there? um I love that. It was going back to my comfort zone after two years of bit of disruption to adding new skills like like the data,
00:17:49
Fab
data side, so i I moved into that world, staying in London.
00:17:54
Joe Waltman
what year What year would this have been?
00:17:57
Fab
It is pre-COVID, so 2000, what was that, 20, only with the COVID 2019, 2020, so around that time.
00:17:59
Joe Waltman
Oh wow, okay.
00:18:08
Fab
ah We're expecting our third child as well. who was, ah we will we call her a COVID girl. that they was yeah We had, it was actually pretty good because we we did not, I did not have to travel much. So it was a very different experience.
00:18:30
Fab
and Obviously COVID was a terrible thing, but in some respects, respect was ah also, you know, reriding a little bit um families and so, in It was, I said, 2020.
00:18:46
Fab
For a couple of years, I did that job from London. And then given that it was a very global job with no particular geographies like like before, then we decided it was, again, time to go back to Italy.
00:18:58
Fab
And our kids at the time were speaking more English than Italian. My wife is also Italian, so we wanted to give them a bit more you know roots.
00:19:03
Joe Waltman
Mm hmm.
00:19:07
Fab
And again, Massek has a great company. to allow you to do that. We moved to Rome and I continue to do the global job from Rome. So that was 2022,
00:19:20
Fab
I think, so two years ago. So, settle in Rome. um Great. But then this job is a lot of travel again. So global role with clients from Asia Pacific to North America.
00:19:37
Fab
and then And then I turned 50. And then I said, listen, I've been ah been in MasterCard for 16 years. It's great to have but a corporate career. I want to try to leverage a little bit what I learned as ah as a CEO there and with my turnaround. And I want to to do it for real now. So not backed up but ah by a company, but to do it there to do it full stack.
00:20:05
Fab
So I started to look and also wanted to travel a little bit less. So I started to look. yeah Six months ago, um so June 2024, so actually five months ago, I started a new adventure. I leave MasterCard after 16 years and I'm i'm the the CEO of Bancomat.
Leadership at Bancomat and New Strategy
00:20:26
Fab
which is the Italian, ah it's the easiest way of defining it is the Italian mastercard. So it's busy, same job as mastercard, but confined to Italy. It's a local scheme and the power's 30 million cards in Italy.
00:20:40
Fab
And there I am um running it.
00:20:44
Joe Waltman
Wow, wow, this is...
00:20:44
Fab
running it
00:20:46
Joe Waltman
yeah Give us some idea of of, this sounds like a big job and a big jump to going from the you know relatively safe harbors of MasterCard to a, is it a startup or or it sounds like it's pretty established if you've got.
00:20:48
Fab
All right.
00:20:56
Fab
No, no, no, it's been around for 40 years where I actually like to like to call it ah fintech with 40 years of experience. That's how I dub it.
00:21:09
Joe Waltman
huh
00:21:09
Fab
Look, domestic schemes, as we like to call independent industries, have been around for a while. They suffered a big competition when MasterCard and Visa got global. But they're kicking back now with with a few nice, more local ideas.
00:21:24
Fab
And Bancomat was um Again, it's a bit of the decline in their business and then the private equity fund, a local, very large Italian one, very good company that invested and they found me as the new CEO. So they put some money in, they hire me, they get new blood, new injection of money.
00:21:50
Fab
And now the last five months have been, again, a lot of fun, got a lot of running around. We have a new strategy. We have a new team. We have a new brand, which we launched two weeks ago.
00:22:03
Fab
A bit of a refresh of brand was very strong, but it was a bit of a no perception.
00:22:04
Joe Waltman
Mm.
00:22:12
Fab
So now we're launching completely new. We're launching the digital business. We're going off their market that we were not in So it's a lot of excitement. I feel that I'm rejuvenated by the by the challenge. So it's ah there it is. it's ah It's today. So after five months of this, um that's where I am with my life today.
00:22:42
Joe Waltman
but and and so What's it like going from this, i MasterCard's an American company? Excuse my ignorance here.
00:22:47
Fab
It is an American company headquartered in New York State, upstate New York, which I used to travel every month. And now I'm...
00:22:55
Joe Waltman
What's it like going from a, ah you know albeit on the European side, but working for a big American company to working for like a legit full on Italian company?
00:23:04
Fab
you Yeah. Well, listen, as I always say, there's the yin and the yang, you know, the good and the bad, they're all intertwined. there's ah Obviously, being the CEO, it's a relatively small company. We're around 120 people, and but we're growing. so There's the the the liberty of being able to change things and move things around in ah in ah in a company that the the perimeter is is defined.
00:23:33
Fab
um we may I miss a little bit the globality of it. ah Give or take, the last 25 years, I've been traveling around and I had built an international career and this is as distant as you can imagine. This is serving the Italian community and we want to distinguish ourselves from mass again and visa by being local.
00:23:53
Fab
So I'm forging all this partnership with local... and By the way, the the the local landscape in Italy is great. We're forging alliances on food, on music, on sport, which is fun, but it's very very very it's a lot of fun.
00:24:06
Joe Waltman
Yeah, yeah, a lot of fun.
00:24:08
Fab
but It's very local, so I miss i miss the international ah part. family is happy although my my kids um said well dad now you travel between Rome and Milan as much as you used to travel between Rome and Sydney for us it doesn't really make a difference you you're not home and they're not wrong but I'm a bit less tired ah from the jet lag. The jokes aside um what I discovered after you know being around 25 years is that that you know real connections and
00:24:42
Fab
being part of a community still matter a lot. And in these five months, I think I've ah expanded my local network with the and incredible um connections, which I wasn't really able to do.
Community Connections and Italian Heritage
00:24:59
Fab
After a while, when you travel the world, you meet somebody in Sydney, and they know that you live in London or in Rome. They're not going to be there for the next six months. It's great. Chitchat. And then you're off to São Paulo, and then you're off to and LA, which is very, very fashionable and very cool, but it's not because you you know, it's too broad to be able to have meaningful relationships. This is a smaller, I would be afraid of the locality. But I discovered the the nice part, which is, you know, it's the the nice community sense of community, which I'm positively surprised
00:25:37
Joe Waltman
And there's a lot to be said for just kind of going home, you know being around people that you're you're you know a little more, you know I don't know what the word is, you know comfortable with or familiar with or whatnot. I feel that. I think a lot of other people feel that too. As you get older, you sort of lose the wanderlust and you know appreciate where your your roots a bit.
00:25:56
Fab
hundred percent I mean, I still got the urge every two or three months to jump on a plane and to go somewhere. But being able to be home, it's nice.
00:26:07
Fab
And there's a lot of things in Italy that ah appeal to people our age, rap to everyone, but you know especially to people our age.
00:26:16
Joe Waltman
Yeah, yeah you you you won't get much sympathy complaining about having to live in Italy.
00:26:17
Fab
so
00:26:20
Joe Waltman
Let's let's put it that way. i Wrapping this up, the question I ask everybody at the end, kind of a two-parter, is there anything that we as the community can do to help you in in in where you're at personally, professionally, and vice
Mentorship and International Network
00:26:34
Joe Waltman
versa?
00:26:34
Joe Waltman
What are you able to do to to help the community?
00:26:39
Fab
So on the first part, I think i I link it back to my desire to be connected internationally, ah which I felt that it might be a bit less. So every time I go and travel somewhere, there's one in seller, which I think is great. So staying connected and being able to exchange ah views of the world. ah It's part of the inside vibe, and that's something that I want to keep having even more so because I now live in a bit of a smaller community. um On what I can do for others, I think it's probably something that is not very original, but it's every one of the 20 years, it's the give back part. We've all been very lucky. There are a lot of people that are now
00:27:33
Fab
starting their career. I'm helping and supporting a few entrepreneurs in Italy by either investing or just simply mentoring. If there is anyone that wants some support and advice on things that I've done, obviously, I haven't done everything, but there are a few things that I've done. I'm always happy to to talk and chat and have just an exchange of ideas. And I think that's a very that's a very useful thing that one can do.
00:28:07
Joe Waltman
And I assume you can also give some good tickets to ah sporting events and music shows in in Italy for anybody who might be ah might be interested. um And I'll make sure they they hit you up for that.
00:28:16
Fab
We're open for any any time you want to come. I'm sure you don't need a reason to come to Italy, but there's one more here in Rome on Milan. Guys, come and we're here.
00:28:27
Joe Waltman
Wonderful. Fabrizio, thank you so much for your time. great to Great to catch up.
00:28:31
Fab
Joe and everyone, thank you very much. It has been very fun. So thank you.
00:28:37
Joe Waltman
Bye, Chris.