Juan José Ortiz is a partner at Axis Corporate and leads the firm’s Global Risk & Sustainability practice. He has an extensive career and brings over 25 years’ professional experience in financial services, risk consulting, and regulation. He was a partner at two of the ‘big four’ consulting firms for over 15 years and at another within the ‘big six’. He previously worked at SAS and Bankinter.
Juan José has worked for most of the leading financial institutions in Spain, including both banks and credit societies, and for organizations in countries such as Brazil, Portugal, Mexico, UK, Germany, and USA. He has rolled out major projects for Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankia, Sabadell, Bankinter, Ibercaja, Liberbank, and a good many medium and small-sized financial institutions. He has also partnered on international projects for organizations such as HSBC, Nordea, Santander Consumer Finance (Germany, Poland, Italy, UK…), ITAU, etc. He has worked on regulatory projects led by oversight bodies and regulators including the transparency and asset review exercises implemented by the Bank of Spain and the ECB. Juan José has developed projects across several insurance companies in Spain and worked in a number of organizations in other industries. He was involved in preparing and verifying non-financial reporting records under Act 11/2018.
- Describe your position at Axis Corporate.
I am currently a partner at Axis Corporate, heading up the firm’s Global Risk & Sustainability practice, where I bring extensive experience in financial services, risk consulting, and regulation. I have a crosscutting role, shoring up the risk offering and covering sustainability projects, in addition to supplementing the digital area and innovation work, given my background and experience in big data and predictive modeling projects.
I help customers take strategic decisions in the different stages of the risk life cycle and to improve their decision-making processes. I also help them deliver on their sustainable development goals. Technological and environmental risks and the social, people, and governance aspects of functions within an organization are key areas that need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner to take a business forward.
- What do you like most about your job?
I consider it very important to do things differently, focused on improving customer outcomes and developing talent in order to pivot to the changing environment we are experiencing. Axis Corporate brings together capabilities and experiences that make it possible to motivate a change in organizations through ideas, innovation, technology, excellence in project development, and personal skills. The market needs professional service enterprises that can deliver multifunctional, flexible professionals able to adapt seamlessly to complex market conditions, perform well in competitive, high-pressure environments, and who are focused on value creation for customers and organizations. To do so, it is essential to shore up trust-based relationships as a consequence of excellence across the development and delivery of the projects we execute.
- What’s a typical Monday for you?
Like most people, I’m not a fan of Monday, it’s the worst day of the week. “I don’t like Mondays, I wanna shoot the whole day down”, as the Boomtown Rats said. For me, Monday starts on Sunday when I go over the week’s schedule and mentally prepare to face it, but the fact is that if you are doing what you like you always find a reason to make yourself work better than the Monday before. There is nothing special about Monday until Sunday rolls around. It is the only day of the week that starts the evening before.
- What are the key ingredients to being good at what you do?
For me the key is putting your heart and soul into everything you do. You have to be the person who shows most enthusiasm if you want others to believe in your idea. You also need to be excellent and creative in approaching the solution to a problem and simplify it so that people understand the solution. It involves making an impact and inspiring change. The real reward is when you see the results make an impact on organizations and cause them to change and markedly improve their expectations.
- Which sentence do you like to start the day with?
You always have to start the day with a purpose… “Today I am going to …” Every day you have to achieve a small goal because the big challenges and objectives are made up of small details that you can grow with the perseverance and excellence needed in this profession.