A brief introduction: Hello Everyone! My name is Ignacio. While studying at university, my interest in finance and investing began to grow. I read every book and article about these topics. I later discovered the quant world.

My first internship was at a financial company that provided analysis and signals to banks and funds. There I focused on developing proprietary algorithms to backtest candlestick patterns. While my career turned towards the aerospace sector, I continued studying quantitative investments. I shared that knowledge through different media: I started podcasts interviewing members of the Spanish community, launched a blog, wrote magazine articles about quantitative investment topics, participated in conferences, and collaborated with fund managers.

I am currently working as a Customer Intelligence Manager at a Consumer Finance entity, managing all data-related projects for the insurance business across business units. My work ranges from propensity models to increase sales to customer clustering and database architecture.

Why did I take up the FDP challenge? I pursued the FDP designation to foster and expand upon my combined love of engineering and the Quantitative Investing model. I knew that the FDP curriculum was a perfect blend of data and finance.

What is great about FDP: As the curriculum consists of leading papers and books related to Finance and Machine Learning, this program is a reference for the future.

Although this might be surprising, we face various regulatory and compliance issues, and the FDP Institute’s curriculum provides an invaluable understanding of the subject. Concerning business development, we are constantly trying to improve our data capabilities to develop effective ways to cluster customers to offer the best-suited products, avoid useless contacts, and generate a higher profit.

As a new FDP Charterholder, I aim to pioneer the FDP Institute program with the Spanish Community. I plan to participate in conferences and create partnerships with other institutions and companies to increase awareness of the FDP Institute.

Sharing an interest is always positive. Communities encourage their members to go further in their research. I see the potential for networking to link people with similar visions and diverse talents to work together to advance their projects.

Podcasts, conferences, and shared knowledge in various media aim to expand the community while also re-educating people who began investing due to advertisements on Instagram or Ponzi schemes.

My advice for aspiring industry professionals: Programming is a commodity. Insight into the "why" and "how" will be the true value-added to an increasingly data-driven industry. The FDP curriculum provides a high-level view of Statistics, Machine Learning, Ethics, and Compliance which helps you prepare for the future.

About Ignacio Villalonga

Ignacio is a Business Intelligence Senior Analyst at Santander Consumer Finance HQ in Madrid, Spain. He studied Aeronautical Engineer MSc, primarily because he enjoys a challenge. Ignacio has always loved math and physics and is genuinely interested in various topics. His professional background is unique due to his varied interests. Ignacio began his career developing models for market pattern detection for a finance company before transitioning to market research for an Aerospace company.

His team employed a quantitative point of view while creating models for aircraft retirement and analysis of defense capabilities countries required, based on economic and alternative data sources. They utilized weather data, piracy attacks, fleet analysis, political information, and other factors.

Ignacio then moved internally to an operational position developing proprietary algorithms to optimize maintenance programs, reducing time and costs for clients. His career then pivoted to a role in the insurance department of a consumer finance company managing data-associated projects, including the development of algorithms to meet database requirements. This challenging role required an understanding of business and data processes and algorithms. He serves as the conduit between business and IT developers. 

Ignacio loves sports and generously volunteers his time to service projects outside the data world.