Manuel Ernesto ⚡️
Profile
Operations leader with a decade of experience in regulated financial services across Europe and Latin America. I've owned individual markets end-to-end while working as part of international leadership teams, where many of my initiatives—dashboards, vendor steering models, and reporting transformations—were later adopted across multiple countries. My focus is on making operational change feel seamless externally while dramatically simplifying work internally.
Experience

Lead, Debt Management (Europe)

Nov 2024 – Present at Pliant, Berlin, Germany

Leading debt management operations across 12+ European markets, with Germany as the primary market. Responsible for vendor relationships, compliance frameworks, and cross-functional collaboration with Product and Tech to build scalable operational systems.

Collections Operations Team Leader

Jun 2021 – Oct 2024 at Mercedes-Benz Bank AG, Berlin, Germany

Owned the Spanish market end-to-end while working as part of an extended international leadership team. Collaborated closely with other market leads, analyzed performance across all markets, and proposed initiatives based on cross-market insights. Several self-initiated projects were later adopted internationally:

  • Designed a vendor performance framework piloted in Spain and rolled out across eight international service centers
  • Replaced a lengthy PowerPoint leadership pack with a Power BI dashboard—removing hours of manual work
  • Worked with rule-based classification and experimented with speech/text analytics embedded in BI tools

Collections & Recoveries Manager (SME Lending)

Mar 2017 – Oct 2019 at Funding Circle Deutschland GmbH, Berlin, Germany

Owned the Spanish market end-to-end for SME loan collections, collaborating with central European teams. Built operational processes from scratch in a scaling fintech environment.

Re-engaged Feb 2020 – Nov 2020 as Collections & Recoveries Advisor (part-time) during COVID portfolio wind-down.

Legal Collections Associate

Jan 2014 – Feb 2017 at Tedin Uriburu y Tedin, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Early career foundation in legal collections, developing understanding of regulatory requirements and structured recovery processes in a professional services environment.

How I Work
With Product & Tech: Define requirements clearly, test rigorously, operationalize effectively. I understand enough about data and tooling to have productive conversations without pretending to be an engineer.
With Leadership: Translate strategy into executable systems. Surface insights from operational data. Make complexity manageable without hiding important nuance.
With Teams: Build systems people trust by involving them in design. The best processes are ones that feel obvious in hindsight.
Areas of Focus
  • Operational process design
  • Vendor steering & performance management
  • Data quality & governance
  • BI dashboards & reporting
  • Cross-functional collaboration
  • Regulatory compliance (financial services)
  • International market coordination
  • Change management
Languages
  • German (Fluent)
  • English (Fluent)
  • Spanish (Native)
  • Italian (Native)
Side Projects

Outside of work, I experiment with self-hosted tools—databases, automation workflows, dashboards—to stay hands-on with the technical concepts I collaborate on professionally. It keeps the conversations with Product and Tech grounded in practical understanding.