Karla is a senior associate at Consortium Legal – Honduras. With 15 years of experience in the financial sector. She specializes in banking and corporate practice. She provides legal counsel for local and foreign financial institutions regarding regulatory, corporate, and contractual issues, which includes the advising on financial products, and banking operations, such as cross-border transactions, consumer banking, credit card operations, securities, and others. She also has experience advising corporations in all contractual matters, service agreements, construction projects, corporate restructurings and in general, diverse matters related to commercial and corporate agreements.

Additionally, she has advised fintech companies that provide various financial technology services including: payments processing services and gateways, technological software for financial institutions, electronic wallets, retail payment systems, credit card processors, among others. She has advised multinational corporations and financial institutions in the creation of compliance programs and risk management for the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism and anti-corruption policies and practices.

She was the Legal Head for Citi’s Financial Group in Honduras for almost four years. During this time, she created the Legal Department, provided legal counsel to the group’s corporate bank segment as well as to its consumer and credit card operations. She also led and managed the corporate governance and legal risk corporate policies for all of Citi’s legal entities in the country. She has been a consultant to the World Bank in Washington D.C. on issues related to legal frameworks and its adequacy to provide access to economic, credit and labor markets. Prior to this, she was also a consultant on Human Rights issues, with an emphasis on children’s human rights and was part of an inter-institutional commission that launched specific legal framework against trafficking and exploitation of children.

• Advised a regional group dedicated to non-banking personal loans in a corporate restructuring of its businesses in Honduras.
• Advised a financial institution and the Financial Innovation Committee of the Central Bank of Honduras in the regulatory reform initiative for the automation and simplification of electronic transfers and payments through the ACH clearinghouse.
• Counsel to a regional financial institution in regulatory issues and recourse regarding technological system requirements and offering of financial products in market conditions.
• Counsel to several international financial institutions regarding cross border operations in Honduras.
• Counsel to a Fintech Company in the implementation and offering of technological services to financial institutions and customers.
• Advised international non-profit organizations with corporate and contractual matters.
• Collaborated with Trace International in the revision and updating of Compliance documents for Honduras.
• Collaborated with the World Bank in its Doing Business Reports for Honduras.

• LL.M in International Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center, United States (2007)
• Degree in Legal Sciences, National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), Honduras (2004)