Forex Brokers Winning LATAM Hire Relationships First

TL;DR: Blueberry has added Jeffrey Navarro as head of Latin America two months after hiring Mario Saudino as LATAM regional manager, creating a two-executive regional desk rather than a simple replacement hire. Navarro brings nearly two decades of FX experience at FXCM, Tickmill, Taurex, Axi, and AvaTrade. The double hire is the clearest public signal yet that Latin America is Blueberry’s primary growth bet for 2026.

Two Hires, Not One: How Blueberry Structured Its LATAM Desk

Most brokers entering a new region appoint one executive, watch the pipeline for six months, and decide whether to double down. Blueberry skipped that patience window. In March 2026 the Australian ASIC-regulated broker brought on Mario Saudino — former STARTRADER regional director, based in Mexico — as LATAM regional manager. By May, Jeffrey Navarro was already in the seat above him, carrying the “head of” title and reporting from Colombia. Neither appointment replaced the other. The org chart now shows a senior executive driving regional strategy while a country-level manager handles the on-the-ground network.

That structure matters operationally. A single LATAM hire at a broker this size usually signals a market test. Two layered hires in under 60 days signal a committed budget and a pipeline already in motion. For anyone tracking forex acquisition strategy in emerging markets, the architecture of this buildout is the data point worth noting.

Navarro’s Resume Maps the Competition Precisely

Jeffrey Navarro has spent nearly 20 years working the Spanish-speaking retail FX market. He started at FXCM in the late 2000s growing the firm’s LATAM client base, then held regional desk roles at Tickmill (covering LATAM and Spain from 2019 to 2022), Taurex (head of LATAM from 2022 to 2024), and Axi before joining AvaTrade in 2024 to run its LATAM operation. He left AvaTrade in late 2025 and began at Blueberry in May 2026.

Read that list of former employers as a competitive map. Every name on it — AvaTrade, Taurex, Tickmill, STARTRADER — is already active in the same territory Blueberry is now entering. Navarro’s network inside IB channels, local payment processors, and Spanish-language support infrastructure is the actual asset being acquired. His title is just the label on the package.

Saudino’s trajectory reinforces the same point. Four years at STARTRADER, which has spent the past several years building LATAM distribution, gave him deep familiarity with introducing-broker mechanics in Mexico and surrounding markets. His earlier roles at TigerWit, Global Markets Group, Roar Forex, and IKON Group round out a network that predates his STARTRADER tenure.

Why Latin America Keeps Pulling Broker Headcount

Latin America rewards brokers that solve three specific problems: local payment rails that handle high card-decline rates, IB networks with pre-existing trader communities, and Spanish-language support that doesn’t run through a translated chatbot at 2 a.m. Brokers that crack all three tend to see faster funded-account growth than they project. Brokers that parachute in a single executive without regional depth tend to stall after the first cohort of IBs churns.

The region is genuinely contested. AvaTrade, Tickmill, Taurex, and STARTRADER all have standing infrastructure here. Blueberry arrives after most of those names, which means it cannot compete on brand recognition alone. The double hire is the correct tactical response: buy the relationships that take five years to build organically. That calculus applies to granular regional targeting in paid channels too — you cannot run a credible LATAM acquisition campaign without knowing which Brazilian states are converting on which payment methods this quarter.

Blueberry also carries the structural weight of ASIC regulation plus offshore licenses in Vanuatu and St Vincent and the Grenadines. That combination lets it serve retail clients across regulatory tiers — stricter ASIC oversight for the compliant onboarding story, offshore flexibility for markets where ASIC passporting doesn’t apply. It is a common broker structure in APAC expansion plays, and it travels reasonably well to LATAM.

The Axi Alumni Network Running Through Blueberry

The hiring pattern here is not subtle. Blueberry founder and CEO Dean Hyde came from Axi. Chief commercial officer Ajak Biar came from Axi. Navarro spent a stint at Axi earlier in his career. When Navarro announced his move he described Saudino and Biar as old friends — a phrase that reveals how much of Blueberry’s growth architecture runs on personal trust rather than formal sourcing.

This is worth flagging for any operator building a regional team. A tight alumni network accelerates trust calibration, reduces onboarding friction, and tends to produce faster deal flow in IB and partnership channels. The risk is concentration: if one key relationship sours or a competitor recruits one node of the network, the desk can thin out quickly. A proper marketing and channel audit of a LATAM operation built this way should stress-test that dependency before the first full quarter closes.

Expansion Context: Prop Trading, New Platforms, Middle East

The LATAM push sits inside a broader Blueberry expansion story. In 2024 the firm launched Blueberry Funded, a proprietary trading brand that reported $2.3 million in payouts to traders in its first year. The broker has also added DXtrade and cTrader to its platform stack alongside its existing MT4/MT5 setup, and it has made moves into the Middle East. The rebrand that dropped “Markets” from the name happened in the same period — a deliberate signal that the firm sees itself as more than a single-product Australian broker.

Each of these moves requires a different acquisition motion. Funded accounts attract a different trader profile than live retail CFD accounts. Middle East expansion carries its own regulatory and localisation requirements. Latin America is a third distinct theatre. Running three regional campaigns simultaneously without managed performance ad infrastructure across each market is how broker budgets get wasted on overlapping or mis-targeted spend. The operators that scale efficiently in this environment treat each region as a separate funnel with its own creative, payment localisation, and IB structure.

What This Means for Forex Operators

Blueberry’s LATAM buildout is a case study in how a mid-sized broker competes against entrenched names in a high-CAC region. The lessons are transferable.

First, senior hires signal budget commitment more reliably than press releases. When a broker stacks two regional executives inside 60 days, the paid acquisition budget follows within a quarter. Competitors in the same geography should treat that as a lead indicator of increased CPL pressure on shared IB networks and performance channels.

Second, relationship-driven hiring and performance-driven marketing are complementary, not alternatives. Navarro’s IB rolodex opens doors; AI-assisted lead qualification determines which of those doors produces a funded account at an acceptable CAC. Brokers that rely entirely on the executive’s network without instrumenting the funnel lose track of which IB sub-source is actually converting.

Third, the LATAM market punishes late entrants who move slowly once they commit. Blueberry’s choice to hire fast and layer rather than sequence is the right call if the regional budget is real. Operators considering their own LATAM entry should model IB commission structures, payment processor fallback rates, and Spanish-language ad creative separately — not as a translated version of their existing campaigns. Running a structured LATAM forex lead generation program requires localized compliance review, not just a language switch on the landing page.

The competition in Latin American retail FX is not easing. Navarro’s own career history proves that AvaTrade, Taurex, Tickmill, and STARTRADER have each invested meaningfully in the region over the past five years. Any operator entering now needs a cleaner funnel architecture and sharper audience segmentation than the incumbents are running — otherwise the IB network absorbs the budget and the broker absorbs the loss.

Originally reported by Finance Magnates, June 2026.