"I feel that I have a responsibility to bring a more humanized perspective to the business world"

Leaders League: You have an incredible professional journey - you were a partner at McKinsey, CEO of Banco BMG, and now you serve on the boards of several relevant companies in the Brazilian market (Iguatemi, Grupo Silvio Santos, MASP), as well as chairs the boards of Biolab and 2W Ecobank, in addition to being a member of the audit committee of Banco Carrefour and a serving as a mentor at Endeavor. Could you tell us a bit about the most rewarding and challenging aspects of your journey?

Ana Karina Bortoni: In these 26 years of career, the experience gained as a partner at McKinsey was undoubtedly crucial for me to develop a broad business vision. I spent almost 18 years leading extremely relevant projects focused on transformation, turnarounds, strategy, governance, performance management, and organizational culture. Then I had the opportunity to act as CEO and experience and put into practice a series of these contents. There were years of successes and mistakes that brought many learnings. In this way, I accumulated vast corporate knowledge, mainly in strategic and inclusive leadership, business management, and entrepreneurial vision. All of this, of course, has been and continues to be rewarding. Currently, as a board member and mentor, my main challenge is to foster ideas and initiatives for innovation, modernization, and ESG, focusing on sustainability and business results, essential topics on the executive agenda.

Leaders League: What opportunities and challenges do you identify for the Brazilian financial and business market in the coming years?

I always say that challenges are opportunities themselves. In such a competitive market as the banking industry, with risks measured at every step, finding competitive advantages for sustainable business growth is the main challenge.

Globally, according to the study Banking Industry Outlook 2024: conviction and agility to thrive, promoted by Deloitte, institutions that achieve more diversified revenue streams and strong cost discipline may be able to increase profitability, including market appreciation superior to most. In terms of competitiveness, the sector continues to face tough challenges, not only from competition among themselves but mainly from new institutions, such as fintechs and cooperatives, as more customers seek the conveniences that non-traditional financial institutions can offer. The scenario in Brazil will not be much different. A recent analysis by Fitch Ratings points to a neutral outlook for the country's banking industry, especially due to the reduction in exposure to risk assets throughout 2022 and 2023 and adequate capitalization. Thus, the sector's good performance reflects the more conservative management of financial institutions, resulting in less provisioning, thus leading to adequate capital generation. Still from Fitch Ratings' point of view, the sector's stability in 2024 is linked to the system's ability to face challenges while executing its strategies through efficient management, even in the face of an unstable and complex macroeconomic scenario.

In this context, we come to technology. Although our country's financial institutions are among the most digitally advanced, with internal processes that have been working with machine learning algorithms, deep learning, and natural language processing techniques for years, generative artificial intelligence remains a major challenge. Despite investments in automation, there is still much room for the transformation of various activities performed by human capital, which could be developed and trained for functions that add value to the business, such as productive interaction with customers or planning campaigns and tools that promote financial education and the use of conscious credit. In this sense, in addition to banking services themselves, the financial industry must also seize the opportunities of emerging technologies to reduce risks, streamline operations, and minimize fraud, gaining consumer trust. All of this is not built overnight. Therefore, 2024 needs to be the beginning of change.

Leaders League: How do you see the importance of gender diversity and inclusion in the corporate environment? In your opinion, what are the key elements to create an inclusive and diverse organizational culture in companies and financial institutions?

This is a topic that makes complete sense today and is present in the conversations I promote at board meetings. If, on the one hand, diversity is a social responsibility that we have as citizens, it is also an indispensable initiative for modern and intelligent management. I support this view in a McKinsey survey that, since 2015, has been conducting the Diversity Matters study and presents the evolution of DEI initiatives in organizations. In the 2023 edition, for example, the report showed that companies with gender diversity in leadership positions had a 39% higher probability of superior financial performance compared to less diverse organizations. And it's not just in leadership that female representation makes a difference. Companies with inclusive boards performed 27% above the others. These are some numbers that prove that diversity makes work teams more engaged and innovative, directly impacting results. But we are still far from the ideal scenario. Considering all the criteria surveyed by the World Economic Forum in the Global Gender Gap Report, such as political participation, labor market, and economic performance, we will need 131 years to achieve gender parity. Although we must work with focus, seriousness, and hope for this, expectations were already better. In 2020, for example, it was expected to take 100 years for us to zero out gender differences in all social segments. That is, we increased this expectation by almost ⅓ of the time. How to build environments that prioritize diversity and inclusion? Starting from a genuine and authentic organizational culture, focused on inclusion and respect for differences, where leadership encourages transversal communication at all levels. Without this, we will not transform our companies.

Leaders League: What are the most significant learnings you have obtained throughout your career that you would like to share with our audience, especially in the context of International Women's Day?

When I started my career, the corporate environment was predominantly male, much more than it is today. There were few examples of women in senior leadership positions, and the glass ceiling was still a strong obstacle to careers, recognition, and remuneration. Slowly, we are making progress. Although we have not achieved natural equity, we see that large companies have realized the need to form more balanced organizational structures. Even so, it is not an easy path. Women's competencies in executive positions are still often questioned, which forces us to continuously prove our management ability. Therefore, my role as a woman and a counselor is to promote dialogue, questioning, and the pursuit of inclusion, fundamental bases for the sustainability of an organization. In addition to guiding and ensuring that norms, rules, best practices, and procedures are followed by corporations, I feel that I have a responsibility to bring a more humanized perspective to the business world. When addressing ESG and DEI topics, I hope to contribute with unique and enriching perspectives. The difference in perspective, experience, and personal context fuels discussions and makes corporate environments more creative and, therefore, more productive and profitable.