Career Biography

Andrés is a lawyer from PUC with a Postgraduate Degree in Commercial Law from the University of Navarra (President of the Republic Scholarship, 1990). With almost four decades of experience, he has worked at two key institutions in the country: 27 years at BancoEstado, where he progressed from legal clerk to General Counsel, and 10 years at Caja Los Andes, where he serves as General Counsel, leading a team of 28 professionals and advising the board of directors, presidents and general managers on strategic decisions.

At BancoEstado, Andrés led a team of 80 people while serving as General Counsel, restructuring the Legal Department to improve efficiency. As part of his academic training, his thesis at Navarra was instrumental in drafting Law 19.499 on the rectification of defects causing nullity in companies and Law 19.857, which created Individual Limited Liability Companies, contributing to legal certainty and promoting entrepreneurship. Among the milestones from this period, he would also highlight the opening of the branch in La Legua (2013), which introduced financial services to a historically excluded community.

At Caja Los Andes, in 2016 he led the defence before the Supreme Court, which recognised the first-class priority of social loans, thereby benefiting all Compensation Funds. In 2021, he successfully defended the application of differentiated interchange rates for prepaid cards, influencing financial regulation. In 2023, he coordinated the consolidation of digital assets to facilitate digital lending and managed the amendment that enabled international financing, diversifying capital.

In 2024, Andrés achieved another significant milestone: the international placement of a US$300 million bond under New York law, unprecedented for a private social security corporation, which strengthened the institution’s financial reputation and lending capacity. That same year, he led the legal defence of a case involving UF 130,000, establishing fraudulent intent on the part of a supplier and thereby protecting the institution’s assets. He also participated in the efforts that secured the suspension of the reduction in interchange rates, reversing a sector-wide decision that was already under way and safeguarding the sustainability of prepaid card issuers.

In 2025 and so far this year, the legal department has supported various forms of external financing: a loan with CAF, financing with foreign banks and two bond placements in the Japanese market, which together total approximately US$400 million.