Alejandro Méndez

What makes Mexico an important part of the strategy of Royal Eagle?

Mexico is a strategic market, not only for renewable energy but for impact investments, too. Due to its favorable location between North and South America, Mexico gets a lot of attention from investment firms. There are two main industrial trends globally, energy and fintech, and Mexico is not exempt from the hype. On one hand, there´s an approved fintech law but also there are setbacks in terms of private investment in energy projects. Furthermore, most countries are talking about deploying 5G capabilities, but even when Mexico offers almost 100% mobile coverage, is still behind in terms of speed and reliability of the network. We believe there are great opportunities for improving current infrastructure and communication capabilities ahead. Another positive factor we are following is that there are many start-ups and great ideas, led by brilliant founders, so Mexico could be a regional hub for Latin America for technology development. Another opportunity area for investment is health, health education, and people’s wellbeing. There is a strong market with 130 million people with a large middle class, and the opportunity lies in offering affordable services for this sector. Mexico will bring many opportunities, especially in energy. Global economies are realizing the immediate need to take care of the environment, and there is an urgency for energy transition into zero emissions, sustainable, and renewable energy sources. Our headquarters are in the US, and we have an office in Panama. We are looking to expand by opening offices in Mexico and Colombia, in 2022.

Why did the company decide to invest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG)?

Back in 2020, we realized that most of our investment thesis matched what is now an ESG criterion. We are mainly in the green energy space, and we own a fintech company. We realized that to be closer to the communities we wanted to serve, the answer was ESG. We realized the impact that ESG investment has on communities and decided to create the Royal Eagle Capital Foundation and brought in qualified and respected experts to run it. In our perspective, 2022 will be a consolidation year for our business strategy. We started the company in 2017, and we have grown consistently. During the challenging time back in 2020, instead of slowing down or shutting down, we reassessed and decided to double our efforts in expanding our portfolio companies and increasing our presence in other markets and sectors. We are investing in renewable energy, fintech, sustainability, and social impacting projects and we are certain that there will be phenomenal growth for us in 2022 and 2023. We are planning to be listed as a public company in both Canada and Mexico. In Canada, we are planning to IPO on the TSX in Q1 and we are currently in early talks with BIVA for an IPO in Q3 of 2022.

What are the main opportunity areas your company identified in the LATAM fintech market?

We come from a long tradition of bankers, with experience in major commercial banks. We saw the transition from traditional banking into fintech as an opportunity to invest in Latin America. According to our data, 60% of the population is either unbanked or underserved. We believe that people should get access to a frictionless financial service, where even they get personalized products. With a small team of developers and programmers in Mexico, we are already developing a project and are creating our algorithms to understand our clients and figure out their needs. From there, we can create lifestyle-based products that fit customers. So far, we have validated 4 or 5 use cases that could be scalable and easily replicated in México and throughout Latin America. The opportunity for any fintech is to be compliant with the regulation, disrupt with obsessive customer service, and be profitable while offering fair interest rates on credits.