Lending trust to scale: Sergio Furio on fintech, purpose and reinventing the system

In a world where finance meets technology at break-neck speed, many believe disruption is about rewriting the rules. But for Sergio Furio, founder and CEO of Creditas, the real challenge is rewriting the system with integrity, purpose and human-first thinking. Sergio Furio at VDS in Valencia gave the audience a candid account of his journey scaling a Latin-American fintech into a global reference, and shared the lessons that matter when you build for impact, not just growth.

The stage at the City of Arts and Sciences was filled with founders, investors and tech executives hoping for growth hacks and rapid scale stories. What they found instead was a deeper exploration of trust, culture and what it means to build a sustainable business. In his remarks, Furio stripped away the glamour of valuations and spotlighted the often messy reality of transformation.

 

From Brazil to the world

Sergio Furio at VDS began by reflecting on his early years in Brazil, where access to credit was limited and many people were excluded from the traditional banking system. “When the system is built for the few, it fails the many,” he argued. That observation triggered the founding of Creditas: a move to create lending solutions with transparency, fairness and technology-driven reach. The vision was clear: make finance accessible, responsible and scalable.

He spoke about the moment when they first realised the business was more than just another fintech upstart. “We discovered that our growth wasn’t only in numbers but in the trust we earned,” he said. And trust, he emphasised, becomes a competitive moat once you scale. For startup founders and innovation leaders, that shift from “growth at all costs” to “growth with trust” is often the inflection point.

 

Culture and scaling across borders

Scaling a business across Latin America and then globally brings heavy complexity: regulatory differences, cultural nuance, talent gaps, and rapid market shifts. Furio shared how Creditas navigated those waters by anchoring culture in its mission and values, rather than letting them erode under pressure. “If your culture is a vestige of word clouds and not visible behaviour, you will lose it in the sprint,” he warned.

One of his key messages: scale shortcuts rarely work. Instead of copying playbooks, they built frameworks that allowed teams in different countries to adapt while staying true to core purpose. He said: “Culture is what happens when you are not in the room — it is the invisible leadership.” That insight resonated with the audience of scale-ups, many of whom face the same challenge of cross-border growth.

 

Purpose beyond profit

Sergio Furio at VDS did not shy away from the tension between scaling fintech for profit and staying true to purpose. “If your ambition is only to build the biggest, you will be blind to the risks you are creating,” he said. He described how Creditas had to align its product design, regulation and customer-outcome thinking with its mission to close financial gaps, not just chase market share.

He shared a story of a redesign of one of their products: they found that the lowest income segment they had targeted was still excluded by a small fee and used a third-party loan that cost five times more. It forced the company to redesign the offering even though it meant slower growth. “Growth at scale is meaningless if you are excluding the very person you said you would serve,” he said. For innovation and tech leaders this is a sharp reminder that product-market fit includes fairness, access and trust, not just traction.

 

The long game of innovation and legacy

Closing his talk, Furio spoke about what happens once the growth machine is humming: how do you embed legacy? “The real test is after traction when nobody is watching because you have already found escape velocity,” he said. He urged leaders to build systems and behaviours that survive beyond founder energy, hype cycles or favourable markets.

His advice was straightforward: build durability over novelty. He said that innovation often becomes outdated unless the culture and purpose are baked into routines. “The sprint is fun, the marathon defines you,” he said. For the VDS audience of tech founders, investors and scale-up managers this was a key takeaway: focus on habits, habits become culture and culture becomes competitive advantage.

 

Why this talk mattered for VDS 2025 attendees

For the more than 12,000 participants at VDS 2025 — startups, corporates, investors and ecosystem enablers — Furio’s talk offered more than fintech tactics. It delivered a leadership roadmap for scaling globally from an emergent market context with integrity, inclusion and trust at the core. Whether you are launching a product, expanding internationally or building a mission-oriented team, the lessons apply: scale demands more than code or capital. It demands clarity of purpose, alignment of culture and relentless focus on the human outcome behind the transaction.

 

The real lesson behind the story

Behind the metrics, the funding rounds and the global expansion plans, Furio encouraged leaders to remember this: your business is not sustainable unless the people you serve feel seen, safe and empowered. He ended with a phrase that echoed in the room: “If you build for everyone you serve, then when you serve well you build for everyone.” Perhaps the greatest legacy of his talk was to shift the focus from “How fast can we grow?” to “How well can we serve?”