MIGUEL VÁZQUEZ - PRESIDENT UENO BANK

TOPIC 1: FINANCIAL

1. What is your opinion, Mr. Vázquez, regarding the financial and banking sector in Paraguay, and what do you think should be done to further develop it in the coming years ?

E: The financial sector in Paraguay is highly developed in several areas, but there is still a lack of banking services, greater infrastructure, and easier access for people with fewer resources to banking. This can be achieved by creating new, more digital and less expensive channels to reach the entire population.

One advantage is that almost all Paraguayans have a smartphone, but there's a lack of infrastructure in terms of internet access, which would automatically make it easier for people to open banks. That's the big difference with Ueno: in less than three minutes and with just a few clicks, you can have a bank account with access to a MasterCard debit card, which is international, giving you access worldwide. Now the government is about to auction 5G licenses, helping telecommunications companies in Paraguay bring faster internet to the entire country. There's also a very interesting phenomenon happening globally that's democratizing internet access: Starlink. It's becoming more widespread in Paraguay every day, and this helps improve finances by giving people unlimited access to digital banking.

2. Tell us more about the history of UENO BANK and what you consider to be its greatest achievements to date?

E: Grupo Vázquez was founded over 75 years ago . My grandfather, Elías Villasanti, started it all, and my father, Víctor Vázquez, began in the financial sector over 40 years ago . I've been with the company for almost 20 years ; I started very young because I enjoyed it and wanted to spend more time with my father. Starting with Credicentro, which was our entry into the financial sector, we began investing heavily in technology over 10 years ago , not only in technology for accessing credit through apps, but also in artificial intelligence. We acquired other companies and several competitors, such as credit institutions, to better manage data. Currently in Paraguay, there isn't much compliance with bank salary payments; many employers still pay in cash or by check, and their employees have to go to the banks to cash the checks. Therefore, there isn't complete financial inclusion in Paraguay, unlike in other countries such as Brazil, where bank salary payments are mandatory to ensure proper tracking. This makes accessing data in Paraguay a bit more complex; rather, you need to be able to access historical data on the management of each client in order to shape the future based on that.

Starting in 2021, we restructured all our data models, relying on data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and advanced technology for both credit decision-making and identity verification for our clients' security, as well as for cybersecurity and phishing control. Today, after significant improvements, we are one of the few banks in Paraguay with zero internal fraud, thanks to the high complexity of our systems and their globally competitive security. With Ueno, opening an account is easy, fast, and free. This gives you the opportunity to access banking services and the world. While we currently have over 2.3 million clients, there is still an opportunity for 2 million Paraguayans who lack access to banking services and therefore cannot make direct payments. On the other side, there are also entrepreneurs who can buy directly from Amazon, Alibaba, or whatever, in order to import that merchandise and sell it within Paraguay.

Within our group, we're focused on building an ecosystem. This includes Ueno Bank, Ueno Seguros, Ueno Casa de Bolsa, and Upay, which handles all merchant acquiring. Until recently, Bancard held a monopoly in Paraguay, and with Upay, we're offering better costs and greater benefits—a completely revamped experience. It also allows entrepreneurs to access banking services, because you can't just provide banking services to individuals, but also to businesses.

Ueno draws on Credicentro's more than 40 years of expertise. While the brand itself is new, dating back to 2021, we decided to rebrand it to better reflect the current global landscape and the digital nature of our bank.

E: For us, it's extremely important that our team and all our collaborators are happy and content, that they wake up every day eager to come to work and that it's not a burden. We want them to be able to reach their full potential at work, to grow, because for us, growth isn't just professional, but also familial, moral, athletic, and economic. We have a research team of over 60 people dedicated exclusively to listening to our clients, following up to see what needs improvement. You can only do that with a complete customer focus and, above all, with a lot of technology. This is an opportunity for Paraguay to invest in technology.

3. What is your vision for Ueno Bank in the next 5 years?

E: To continue consolidating our presence in Paraguay, to continue providing jobs for Paraguayans. We have offices in Argentina and are now opening offices in the United States, but always striving to generate more Paraguayan employment. What we hope for in the coming years as a group is to create a financial and technological hub in Paraguay for the world, and that's what we're building by opening new offices in other countries. While we hire many foreigners, in Argentina we have almost 600 employees who are Argentinian, Colombian, Cuban, and Venezuelan. We also always send Paraguayans there so they can accelerate their knowledge and become professionals more quickly. We also closed an agreement two months ago with Oracle specifically for all our employees who want to learn about technology development and coding.

My hope is that we can export technology development with Paraguayans who have the training and ability to generate new technologies for big techs like Apple or Amazon; that is what we as a group are looking for in the long term, being part of that growth.

Within this framework, in 2019 we launched Moonshot, an incentive program for Paraguayan startups. We encourage them to participate in a six-month acceleration program. Starting in 2025, and continuing for the next five years , we've expanded the program to include 100 Paraguayans in incubation. Of those 100, the top 10 entrepreneurs will not only win seed capital (the first-place winner receives $30,000) but will also spend three months living in Silicon Valley, fully paid for by us, to use our offices. We've partnered with Oracle, Google, and Singularity University. As a group, we brought Singularity University from the United States to Paraguay, and we will continue bringing them here for the next five years to conduct talks and provide opportunities for Paraguayans to access and grow their businesses in Silicon Valley. It's important to remember that Silicon Valley is the birthplace of many of the world's leading technology companies. So, what we're aiming for is to give Paraguayans the opportunity to access this, and that includes our employees, whom we allow to participate. We hope that, God willing, many of our employees will become entrepreneurs and transition from being employees to becoming clients, starting their own businesses, and hopefully even becoming competitors. I love competition, and I want it to flourish because it makes everything more efficient.

TOPIC 2. BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNITED STATES

4. What is the relevance of the United States to Ueno Bank? Would they be willing to form any strategic alliances?

E: The United States has always been a strategic ally, and Paraguay must continue to maintain that alliance not only for economic reasons but also to exchange technologies and learn from one another. The American market is the largest in terms of product sales, technology, and also in the financial sector. Today, very few Paraguayan companies are listed or issue debt in the international market, and the United States is, by definition, the number one global player in terms of Wall Street and all financial matters.

The opportunity we have with the United States is enormous. We have high-quality raw materials; our beef is among the best in the world, with a unique flavor and is 100% organic. In the United States, President Trump announced a massive investment in artificial intelligence, and Paraguay has everything needed to host the servers for that AI. We have 100% renewable energy at very good prices, abundant water, and extremely low taxes. Therefore, Paraguay can be a technological hub not only for generating new energy but also for servers, services, and blockchain, thanks to our strategic location. So, the opportunity with the United States is immense.

The opportunity for American businesses in Paraguay is that everything is yet to be done. There's a huge opportunity to bring American technology for electricity, internet, and laptops. In fact, we also represent HP, which is an American company. There's an enormous opportunity here for American products. Starlink has also recently arrived, and we're looking for ways to forge a strong alliance with them to increase their market share in Paraguay. We also have opportunities with Cisco. For American companies, Paraguay represents a tremendous opportunity.

FEDERICO MIGUEL VAZQUEZ VILLASANTI – DIRECTOR/PRESIDENT: He holds a specialization in Finance, Business Management, and Digital Transformation and Innovation of Financial Services from INCAE, as well as an Executive Management Program from IAE and an Executive Program in Marketing from the University of Miami. He is also a member of Singularity University.

5. Before we move on to the last question, we would like to know more about your personal and professional background and how you became the CEO and Chairman of Ueno Bank today?

E: I've been married to Lala for 11 years , and we have three children: an 8- year-old boy , a 6- year-old girl, and a 3- year-old boy . I love spending time with them. I'm very into sports; I do Ironman triathlons, and I've run 10 marathons in total. I really enjoy that. I love traveling with my wife; we take several days off just the two of us. I love watching movies, and I usually watch one movie each weekend with my wife and another with my kids, always looking for something they have in common. I love playing with Legos with my oldest son, and I love off-roading in the UTV in San Bernardino, where I take my kids along and drive them on rough roads at high speed. I'm always learning and exploring; I firmly believe that I don't know anything and that I have everything to learn. I also really like having good people around me, and when I hire someone or keep someone close, it's much more important that they are a good person, a family man with good values, than their resume. I love architecture, building things, I'm always building things and I go after the last detail, I really like cars, I got that from my grandfather and dad.

6. Final message, for the Los Angeles Times readers who will see the Paraguay report when it is published, why should they come to invest or learn about it?

E: Now is the time to come because there's still a lot to do and we don't have large investments yet. Once we have 100% of the investments—right now we only have half, but I think the other half will come this year —we'll be the darling of some countries. Today we're the darling of some countries, but later we'll be the darling of the whole world. So, I think that in Paraguay, Americans have a great opportunity to invest because of the ease with which Paraguayans understand Americans, and that's an advantage over other countries in terms of taxes. In Paraguay and other Latin American countries, American products are always considered high quality, and that's an advantage that the United States and American businesses have. I think that's a positive advantage they can bring to Paraguay. On the other hand, there's a great opportunity to establish maquiladoras (assembly plants), to bring in parts factories because labor is very cheap in Paraguay as well. Additionally, Paraguayans are quick learners and very loyal, which is very interesting.