Cristina Juan de Mena
Head SME Financing
Cristina Juan de Mena holds a bilingual degree in Business Administration and Management from the Carlos III University of Madrid, with international training at the European Business School (Germany). She has spent her entire professional career at Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), where she has held various responsibilities in the field of credit risk. She started in monitoring and recovery functions, later moving on to positions of increasing specialisation in risk analysis, methodologies and policy. Since 2018 she has held senior positions in Risk Management, and since 2024 she has been Head of the Midcaps and SME Risk Assessment Department, leading the analysis and risk assessment of corporate transactions, infrastructure projects, affordable housing finance and capital markets transactions, collaborating in the implementation of new financing facilities, such as ICO Crecimiento.
As Head of SME Financing, she is responsible for managing all direct financing activity for small and medium-sized enterprises, ensuring the correct execution of the entire process—from the reception and processing of applications to pre-approval, decision and formalisation—in alignment with the strategy set out by the Directorate General. She supervises pre-approval reports, manages the flow of digital files and monitors cycle times, proposing operational and technological improvements. She also defines and reports the main activity indicators, maintains the operational relationship with MGAs, ensures the smooth functioning of the SME digital channel and leads the formalisation of operations, fostering the ongoing improvement of the process and compliance with the applicable regulations. She also give impetus to the evolution of the customer unit, coordinates the customer relationship, ensures data protection and develops the specialised team in the SME vertical.
The Standard Operations Approval Unit: Loans, the Standard Operations Approval Area: Guarantees, and the Singular Operations Pre-Approval Unit report to this Directorate.