You are Fernando Quintanilha-Mendoza, 58, newly appointed Lead Independent Director of CorpFinancia Andina. The new chair asked you for a 90-day board-effectiveness review. The skills audit is back. The composition recommendation is yours to write.
The situation
CorpFinancia Andina (CFA) is a Lima-listed (BVL) Andean financial holding — retail banking, asset management, microfinance, and a 2024 digital-banking acquisition. €3.8B in revenue. €38B in assets under management. Operations across Peru, Colombia, Ecuador. Founded forty years ago by the Suárez-Galindo family; family still holds 18% with one board seat. New chair Patricia Olaeta-Linares started six months ago, after thirty years operating Andean banks.
The board is nine directors. Average tenure 8.4 years. Strong banking-operating roots: four of nine are ex-CEOs of regional banks. The skills audit you commissioned from Spencer Stuart Lima identified the pattern you suspected: the board is dense on banking-operating and regional-regulatory expertise, and thin to absent on the things the next strategic cycle requires — digital transformation, cyber risk, ESG and climate transition risk, capital-markets sophistication, and modern talent strategy. The chair wants your composition recommendation in two weeks for the November AGM cycle.