UNIFIN Financiera, S.A.B. de C.V. was founded in 1993 by Rodrigo Lebois and today leads the way in Mexico’s operational leasing sector. The entrepreneur started the company with just five employees but it’s grown to become the largest independent financial corporation in Latin America with assets of $4.4bn and a debt of $3.6bn.
The company now has 880 employees, offering operational leasing, factoring, auto loans, working capital loans, structured loans and insurance solutions. Operational leasing remains UNIFIN’s core market covering a wide range of areas, from cars, trucks and helicopters to heavy machinery and medical equipment, ensuring diversity throughout the operation. The success of the company has been driven by its philosophy of offering custom made financial solutions, providing all its clients with the highest quality of financial services backed by a team of specialists, who ensure the company remains in sound financial health.
UNIFIN´s strategic decision was to focus on offering the highest quality service, knowing that his company’s edge was in its attention to detail and tailored client approach. In 2019, under Mr. Sergio Camacho direction as CEO, UNIFIN started to develop an important digital transformation, with the objective to offer new financial and digital tools to help Mexican SMEs to better connect with their customers, increase their income and find new markets.
UNIFIN recognized the urgent need for SMEs to access financing and the fundamental role of technological platforms in bringing financing options to SMEs that have not been regularly served by traditional credit institutions. Adding to these new trends, UNIFIN created Uniclick, a state-of-the-art digital financial platform that offers an easy, fast, and simple process to pre-approve a line of credit in minutes. Thanks to its cutting-edge technological infrastructure and artificial intelligence laboratory, Uniclick will expand its presence in the financial market of the business sector, with innovative strategies based on the millions of data generated by its platform, which allows us to anticipate trends and needs of companies. SMEs - generating better credit proposals for SMEs.
The vision of Uniclick is to be the “one-stop-shop” of SMEs. This represents being a center of integral solutions for businesses, where in addition to providing agile and fair financing, offering tools and non-financial products that allow entrepreneurs to boost the growth of national businesses.
Unifin has recently established strategic partnerships with Google and Microsoft to promote Mexican SME´s in their digitalization process, offering innovative services and financial services. The objective is to help SMEs not only with the necessary financing by offering simple and unsecured credits for up to 3 million pesos, but also with digital tools that allow them to accelerate their growth. What differentiates Uniclick from the competition is unquestionably it´s natively hybrid business model, which is its greatest differentiator, because in addition to the
digital platform, which is capable of authorizing loans to SMEs in a matter of minutes, UNIFIN has presence and coverage at national level, which allows them to accompany SMEs both in person and remotely at all times, turning the expedited financing process into an experience tailored and chosen by the client.
In addition, UNIFIN has recently joined the UN Principles of Responsible Banking, the world’s largest global banking community focused on sustainable finance, sharing best practices, and working together on practical guidance and pioneering tools that benefit the entire industry. UNIFIN looks to contribute to equitable economic development. By adhering to these principles, they want to take a leadership role in accelerating the fundamental and necessary changes in the economy for current and future generations to achieve shared prosperity. International Investor has awarded UNIFIN Best Digital Transformation - Credit & Leasing Mexico 2022 and Business Personality Of The Year 2022 for Rodrigo Lebois, to understand the success of UNIFIN, we look closer to the resilient spirit of its founder.
Rodrigo Lebois Mateos Founder, Chairman of UNIFIN was born in Mexico City and graduated in Business Administration. At 30, he left the car sales company he worked for, and with his savings founded UNIFIN, a financial institution that began operating solely in the vehicle-leasing sector. Then came the financial crisis of December 1994, when the Mexican peso suffered a
devaluation of 100%. As a result, on 1 January 1995, Lebois awoke to a $17m dollar debt. He devoted his energy to negotiating his debt, and by 2001 he had managed to pay it off completely. This was an exceptional feat; the vast majority of Mexican debtors either declared bankruptcy, declared themselves unable to meet their liabilities or simply disappeared. In 2001, he started over again, hired banking experts and managed to avoid being hit by the financial crisis of 2008. Lebois strongly believes that a good businessman is not merely an executive officer or president of a company, but that special talent is required. This belief is reflected in the company’s commitment to innovation. Lebois is an entrepreneur who loves his country, and believes a large part of success lies in the ability to build and develop a talented team of professionals.
