Operational Initiative · Founding Squad
Collateral Unlock
Building a collateralized financial operation from zero inside one of Brazil's largest banking ecosystems.
Itaú Unibanco · Collateral · 2024–2025 · Senior PM · Founding Squad
The Product
Collateral — uses savings or CDB as collateral to increase the customer's credit-card limit.
Operational Ecosystem
5 interdependent squads: Contracting, Unlock, Execution, Growth and Coexistence. Product with 1.6M active users and R$12.03B in collateralizable potential.
My Role
Founding PM for the Collateral Unlock initiative — responsible for operational structure, roadmap definition, product rules and cross-functional execution from zero.
What had to be created
- No defined unlock process
- No business rules for savings vs CDB collateral
- No transaction control during unlock operations
- No customer notification for the asynchronous flow
- No protection logic for delinquent accounts attempting unlock
- No flow for cancelled cards with active collateral
Operational challenges
Savings in BRL vs CDB in shares — incompatible units of measure across systems.
Direct impact on credit and collateral — any error generates real financial risk.
Building organizational urgency for processes that had never existed before.
Defining the product while the surrounding ecosystem was still being built.
Execution approach
Discovery
Customer interviews to understand reasons for early unlock. Hypothesis framework (Problem → Hypothesis → Validation → Method). Quantitative analysis to size the problem.
Operational systems
Story-points scoring sheet with effort and complexity criteria for frontend and backend. Miro board separating Discovery from Delivery. Sprint objective documentation — adopted as a benchmark across squads.
Business rules
Defined the full product ruleset: savings vs CDB, blocks for delinquency, cancelled cards, receipts, asynchronous notifications and collateral execution.
Validation
A/B test on the design pattern: validated 'redeem all' button vs input field. Likert survey with 202 respondents (63.37% top score). Stress test: 100% success at 68.8 RPS.
The Critical Moment
Real financial risk in partial unlock operations
The unlock flow was highly sensitive — it moved real money and depended on an external service operated by the collateral team.
On a partial unlock, the system would unlock the full amount and immediately re-block the remainder. In some cases, when re-blocking, the funds were no longer available in the customer's account — exposing the bank to real financial loss.
How I solved it
- →Mapped the full transaction flow during the unlock window.
- →Implemented a transactional locking rule — no movement allowed during the operation.
- →Worked with the collateral team to enforce consistency across systems.
- →Created monitoring alerts to surface failures before customer impact.
"The product was sensitive enough that any failure meant real financial risk. In regulated fintech, the business rule is as critical as the code."
Operational systems created
Unlock flow
End-to-end rules with transactional locking, delinquency protection and savings vs CDB distinction.
Retention screen
Explained the credit-limit impact before unlock — reduced unlocks by 15%.
Notification system
End-to-end asynchronous communication: contracting, unlock, collateral block and execution due to default.
Receipts
Traceability for every block and unlock transaction, with full product auditability.
Squad operating system
Story points, Miro board, sprint objectives — recognized by leadership as a benchmark.
Structured discovery
Hypothesis framework, RICE, A/B testing, Likert with 202 respondents and a launch stress test.
Business & operational outcomes
Most important realization
Early in my career, I believed strong execution alone would naturally create visibility.
This initiative taught me something different: operational impact must also be communicated clearly.
Execution matters. Visibility and alignment matter too.
Key operating principles
A non-existent product becomes real through method
Discovery, hypotheses, validation and incremental delivery.
Business rules are product
In fintech, a wrong rule is a real financial and regulatory risk.
External dependencies require governance
Owning the rule isn't enough — you must guarantee its execution.
Visibility is part of the PM role
Work that isn't communicated effectively doesn't compound. I learned this the hard way.
Squad culture is product
Processes, rituals and tools shape how the team executes — and that is PM responsibility.