A region that seems unable to reach its potential

The headquarters of Creditas is a sleek glass tower near São Paulo’s ring road, furnished with rows of computer terminals, modish sculptures and swing-seats for relaxation. The offices have space for 2,700 workers. The firm designed them before the pandemic, when it had 1,200 staff. Now it has 4,000, almost a fifth of them digital developers and some based in Mexico and Spain. Creditas offers loans secured against homes, cars and pay cheques at much lower interest rates than banks. It raises the money in the markets and uses venture capital to finance technology and customer acquisition. It is one of a clutch of startups that are shaking up Brazil’s financial system. The banks had inefficient branch networks and charged high margins on a low volume of business. “We have forced the banking industry to change,” says Sergio Furio, Creditas’s founder, who is Spanish. “They now speak a different language, cutting costs and automating.”