For Daniel Villar, the era of “growth at all costs” in financial technology is officially over. While much of the sector spent the last decade thriving on disruption rhetoric, promising to bypass legacy institutions through speed and aggressive acquisition, Villar has emerged as a leading voice for a more sober, durable approach to digital finance. As a strategy and operating leader with extensive experience across banking, payments, and fintech in both the United States and Latin America, Villar argues that the next generation of industry success will not be defined by who moves the fastest, but by who executes best within complex regulatory constraints.
Villar’s perspective is shaped by a career path that bridges the often-siloed worlds of compliance and innovation. Having worked first as a financial regulatory lawyer in Colombia and later as an operator launching SoftBank-backed Ualá operations in the country and advising banking and payment clients at McKinsey & Company, he possesses a rare “bilingual” ability to navigate both technical agility and institutional stability. He notes that while the early “playbook” of fintech relied on operating in lightly regulated environments, today’s landscape demands a fusion of operational discipline and cross-border scalability, a challenge Villar has directly tackled in his work leading large-scale transformation programs.
“In financial services, you can no longer treat regulation as something you deal with after product-market fit,” asserts Villar, emphasizing that regulatory design and capital structure are now core components of a company’s value proposition. His work focuses on this precise intersection, challenging the traditional view of regulation as an obstacle. Instead, Villar advocates for a strategy where deep institutional alignment allows companies to scale effectively without breaking fragile financial systems, a philosophy that is becoming increasingly critical as digital banking adoption accelerates in emerging markets.
That shift is particularly visible in emerging markets, where digital banking adoption has accelerated faster than institutional frameworks were originally built to handle it. Countries across Latin America have seen explosive growth in fintech usage, driven by underbanked populations and mobile-first consumers. At the same time, regulators have been forced to modernize quickly, often while supervising entirely new business models.
Villar, who has worked both as a financial regulatory lawyer and later as an operator launching digital banking platforms, argues that this tension between innovation and oversight is shaping the next generation of fintech leaders. “The companies that win are the ones that understand how to work with regulators as partners, not obstacles,” he says. “That requires a very different mindset than pure tech entrepreneurship.”
From Disruption to Infrastructure
Villar points to the payments and digital banking sectors as the clearest examples of this evolution. He notes that while early fintech entrants focused on front-end experience, offering cleaner interfaces and faster onboarding than traditional banks, incumbents have since replicated those features. For Villar, the new competitive frontier is building resilient infrastructure that can scale nationally, comply with local regulations, and integrate with legacy financial systems.
According to Villar, this is where strategy and execution often diverge. “You see a lot of strong PowerPoint strategies that underestimate how hard it is to actually implement change inside regulated institutions,” he says. “Execution is where most value is either created or lost.”
That observation mirrors broader trends in the consulting and private equity worlds, where value creation teams are increasingly embedded in portfolio companies rather than operating at arm’s length. Investors are less patient with abstract transformation plans and more focused on measurable impact, particularly in cost efficiency, payments modernization, and technology integration.
In recent years, Villar has led work at McKinsey & Company on large-scale transformation programs aimed at exactly those challenges, including initiatives that identified significant cost savings and launched pilots delivering rapid financial impact. Recently, he led a payment processing infrastructure modernization project, identifying over $50 million in annual cost savings for a leading payments company.
He notes that speed still matters, but it must be paired with governance. “Fast does not mean reckless,” he says. “The best teams move quickly within clear decision frameworks and accountability structures.”
Cross-Border Complexity
While modern fintech is inherently global, with payment flows and digital wallets rarely stopping at borders, regulation remains deeply local, shaped by unique domestic, political, and legal frameworks. This disconnect creates a massive structural hurdle for expansion, but it is an area where Villar has distinguished himself as a critical operator. He argues that a product working seamlessly in one market often requires substantial redesign elsewhere, not just for compliance, but for cultural and institutional fit.
Villar points to Latin America as a case study in this complexity. “Each country has its own regulatory philosophy, even if they share similar financial inclusion goals,” he says. “Scaling across the region is not about copying and pasting. It’s about understanding how different systems interact.” By building an organization from the ground up that forced discipline and eliminated silos, Villar demonstrated that success in emerging markets requires leaders who understand both strategic intent and operational realities.
As Head of Business Development, he led the launch of SoftBank-backed fintech Ualá operations in Colombia, where he played a central role in securing the group’s first fully digital regulatory license, a landmark regulatory approval that established the template for digital-only Compañia de Financiamiento charters in the country. The license, granted by the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia in 2022, required Villar to lead negotiations with regulators over a 12-month period while simultaneously building the bank’s operational infrastructure from scratch. Under his leadership, the bank launched its first regulated product, establishing a model that has been followed in other geographies. “That process forces discipline,” Villar says. “You cannot afford silos when the foundations are still being built. Everyone needs to understand both the strategic intent and the operational realities.”
Rethinking the Role of Regulation
While regulation is often framed as a constraint, industry leaders increasingly see it as a source of competitive advantage. Firms that invest early in compliance capabilities, risk management, and institutional relationships tend to scale more smoothly and attract more durable capital.
“Regulation is part of the product,” Villar argues. “If you design it well, it becomes a moat rather than a tax.”
This perspective is gaining traction as fintech firms face heightened scrutiny from regulators and the public alike. High-profile failures and compliance breaches have underscored the risks of underestimating governance, particularly in payments and consumer finance.
At the same time, regulators themselves are evolving. Many supervisory bodies now engage directly with fintech founders and investors, seeking to balance innovation with systemic stability. That dynamic requires leaders who can translate between technical, regulatory, and commercial languages.
“The most effective leaders I’ve seen are bilingual in that sense,” Villar says. “They can speak to engineers, regulators, and investors without losing coherence.”
The Next Phase of Fintech Leadership
As the industry enters its next phase, the profile of successful fintech leadership is changing. Pure disruptors are giving way to operator-strategists who combine analytical rigor with hands-on execution. Experience navigating regulated environments is becoming as valuable as product vision.
This shift has implications beyond fintech itself. Banks, private equity firms, and technology providers are all competing for talent that can operate at the intersection of strategy, regulation, and technology. The demand is particularly strong for leaders with cross-border experience and a track record of delivering measurable results.
Looking ahead, Villar believes the most impactful work will focus on building digital financial infrastructure that is both scalable and inclusive. “The opportunity is no longer just about access,” he says. “It’s about resilience, efficiency, and trust.”
That emphasis reflects a broader recalibration within the industry. Fintech is no longer a peripheral challenger to traditional finance. It is becoming part of the financial system’s core, with all the responsibility that entails.
“The narrative has changed,” Villar adds. “This is no longer about proving that fintech works. It’s about proving that it can last.”
In that environment, the gap between strategy and execution is shrinking. For companies operating in regulated markets, success increasingly depends on leaders who understand that both are inseparable.