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Carlos Álvarez
Chief Risk Officer, Member of Executive Team
FLAR
Carlos Álvarez, CFA, is Director of Risks (Chief Risk Officer) at FLAR (Fondo Latinoamericano de Reservas), where he leads the institution’s risk management framework across credit, market, liquidity, operational, and emerging risks. He has more than two decades of experience in reserve management, investments, and financial risk management, including previous leadership roles at FLAR and the Central Bank of Colombia.
Carlos holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a degree in Industrial Engineering from Universidad de los Andes. He is actively involved in international discussions on financial stability, reserve management, payment systems, governance, and emerging risk topics, regularly engaging with central banks, multilateral institutions, and global financial organizations.
Speaking at SFF 2026
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4:00–4:40pmThu 19 NovPolicy StageHall 3, Singapore EXPOOpen
Technology Rewiring
The Price of Connection: What It Actually Takes to Build Cross-Border Payment Cooperation
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Joyce BoExecutive Vice President, Core Payments, Asia PacificMastercard
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Sohini RajolaExecutive Director, GrowthNational Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI)
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Andrew McCormackChief Executive OfficerNexus Global Payments
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Carlos ÁlvarezChief Risk Officer, Member of Executive TeamFLAR
About this session
Interoperability is widely recognised as a goal, but connecting one country’s payment system to another takes more than technology. It requires alignment on regulation, standards, governance and commercial incentives — as well as negotiation over how costs, risks and benefits are shared. This panel brings together the networks, national payment schemes, policymakers and multilateral hubs working to make cross-border payments more connected, examining where regulatory and commercial frictions persist, how different payment ecosystems can connect and scale across markets, and what smaller or newer markets need to participate on viable terms.
The discussion will explore where cross-border payment cooperation is working in practice, what it takes to make connections sustainable, and whether the biggest barriers to greater connectivity are technical, regulatory or commercial. -
