Chief Executive Officer
ioBuilders
Carlos Matilla is CEO of ioBuilders, where he leads the company’s strategy and development of digital asset technology solutions for institutions across multiple industries. ioBuilders develops products and solutions that enable the use of distributed ledger technologies in regulated financial environments, supporting the issuance, management and operation of financial assets and new digital forms of money such as deposit tokens and stablecoins.
Carlos has extensive experience across banking, capital markets and financial innovation. Prior to joining ioBuilders, he served as Executive Director at Santander Corporate & Investment Banking in London. In this role he worked on strategic initiatives for the Corporate & Investment Banking division, covering areas such as regulatory affairs with authorities including the FCA, PRA and the Bank of England, post-trade initiatives and business strategy across banking and capital markets activities. His work spanned areas including lending, global transaction banking, securitisation and capital markets products such as rates, FX, equity and credit.
Earlier in his career, Carlos was UK Manager at NFQ Advisory, Solutions and Outsourcing, where he led strategic consulting projects for financial institutions and held full P&L responsibility for the Corporate & Investment Banking business in the United Kingdom. During this period he developed deep expertise across capital markets, financing and regulatory change, working on topics such as derivatives markets, short-term funding, project finance, trade finance, debt mobilisation and securitisation.
He was also involved in early blockchain and distributed ledger initiatives, leading the NFQ blockchain innovation line and supporting the deployment of a smart contract platform for the lifecycle management of bilateral interest rate swaps, covering pre-execution, execution and post-trade processes.
Today, Carlos works closely with financial institutions and industry stakeholders on the application of digital asset technologies to financial markets, including capital markets, financing, global trade finance, asset and wealth management and other asset classes.
Digital assets are reshaping how money moves across financial markets. As tokenization expands and settlement cycles compress toward real time, financial institutions must determine how to represent fiat money on-chain in a way that preserves regulatory compliance, operational resilience, and balance sheet efficiency. Deposit tokens and stablecoins offer two competing approaches to this challenge. In this Lightning Talk, ioBuilders CEO Carlos Matilla will explore the strategic implications of these models, providing a clear framework for understanding how digital money will integrate with existing banking systems and enable new financial market infrastructures.