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Sonia Barquin

PartnerJakarta

Works with financial institutions in Southeast Asia and across the world to design and launch new digital businesses, digitize operations end-to-end, and collaborate with innovative fintech start-ups

Sonia brings deep expertise in digital banking, including designing and helping to launch greenfield businesses, supporting established banks in end-to-end digitization, and facilitating their collaboration with fintech start-ups. For nearly a decade, she has supported leading banks and other financial institutions across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

In helping clients build new digital businesses, Sonia has worked across a number of issues, including digital strategy, IU/UX design, digital marketing and customer acquisition, zero-based process design, IT, and advanced analytics.

Examples of her recent client work include the following:

  • designing and helping to build several global greenfield digital attacker banks, including all areas of the banks’ proposition and operating model, customer value proposition, products, go-to-market strategy, and front-end and back-end operations
  • leading a retail transformation program for a Southeast Asian bank, with a focus on digital channels, customer life-cycle management (CLM), and back-office operations
  • identifying the market opportunity and designing the business model for a disruptive at-scale consumer-lending and small-and-medium-enterprise-lending models in Asia−Pacific, leveraging digital and advanced analytics

In addition to serving clients, Sonia plays an active role in McKinsey’s knowledge creation on digital banking and CLM.

Published work

A wake-up call to tap into digital wealth,” McKinsey & Company, October 2024

Future of Asia: The future of financial services,” McKinsey & Company, October 2020

The big boost: How incumbents successfully scale their new businesses,” McKinsey & Company, August 2020

Digital banking in Indonesia: Building loyalty and generating growth,” McKinsey & Company, February 2019

Reaching Asia’s digital banking customers,” McKinsey & Company, April 2018

Building a digital-banking business,” McKinsey & Company, April 2016

Digital banking in Asia: What do consumers really want?,” McKinsey & Company, March 2015

Digital Banking in ASEAN: Increasing Consumer Sophistication and Openness,” McKinsey & Company, March 2015

Education

Columbia Business School, Columbia University
MBA

University of Deusto
MA, finance