Itaú and the Leadership of the Bank That Became a Technology Company: Milton Maluhy and the Model That Brazil Exports
Milton Maluhy Filho, CEO of Itaú Unibanco since February 2021, was elected chairman of the Board of Directors of Febraban in April 2026. Gabriel Amado de Moura took over as CFO in September 2024. Zup Innovation, Itaú's technology arm, operates with over 4,000 professionals and has become a benchmark for regional banks seeking to build their own technological capacity.
Itaú Unibanco is often described as the most valuable bank in Latin America. A more accurate description for 2026 would be: the largest financial technology company in the Southern Hemisphere with a banking licence.
The transformation is not rhetorical. It is operational. Itaú processes over 100 billion transactions per year with systems developed in-house. Its open banking platform was one of the first in the Brazilian market and served as a model for the Central Bank when structuring the technical specifications for the national system.
Milton Maluhy and the 2026 Agenda
Milton Maluhy Filho took over as CEO of Itaú in February 2021, succeeding Candido Bracher. Under his leadership, the bank deepened its commitment to proprietary technology, accelerated the integration of AI in credit processes and fraud prevention, and expanded international operations, particularly in South America.
In April 2026, Maluhy was elected chairman of the Board of Directors of Febraban, the federation representing Brazilian banks, with a term lasting until March 2029. The appointment signals the weight that Itaú carries as a reference for digital transformation in the Brazilian financial system: the bank that has invested the most in proprietary technology is now leading the sector's representative body.
Gabriel Amado de Moura took over as CFO of the group in September 2024, completing a renewal of the senior leadership team that preserved strategic continuity while introducing a financial perspective that aligns more closely with the challenges of a large-scale technology business.
Zup Innovation as a Model
Zup Innovation, created as Itaú's technology arm and subsequently operated with relative autonomy, is one of the most interesting experiments in the Brazilian financial sector. With over 4,000 technology professionals, Zup has developed internal platforms that have gradually been opened to the market, including the StackSpot platform, aimed at managing large-scale software development platforms.
Zup represents the thesis that large banks can develop big tech-level technological capability without losing the regulatory focus required by the banking sector. Technology consultancies such as Thoughtworks and CI&T report that the engineering standards implemented at Zup are frequently cited as a benchmark by CIOs of regional banks seeking to build internal competence.
The Regional Context
Itaú's model of investing in proprietary technology contrasts with the approach taken by equivalent European banks, which tend to outsource more intensively to external IT suppliers. This strategic difference has long-term implications: banks with internal technological capacity can iterate more quickly on products and have greater control over customer experience.
For the Latin American banking sector, Itaú's trajectory over the next three to five years under Maluhy will serve as a test of whether the investment in proprietary technology delivers superior returns compared to the outsourcing model that still prevails among regional competitors.