Extra Credit
How Isaac Torres turned a class project into a global enterprise.
When Isaac Torres (MBA '00) first traveled from Mexico City to Indiana in 1995, he was in search of an ideal business school to attend. He wanted to determine if IU South Bend would be a good landing spot. Not only did it prove to be a good fit, but his enrollment proved to be only the first step in an ongoing and deepening relationship with IU, eventually earning Torres the IU Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 2019. In 2023, Governor Eric Holcomb appointed Torres to the nine-person statewide IU Board of Trustees. Torres' term as a trustee extends through 2026. As a trustee, Torres will serve as a valued consultant on fiduciary and legal matters, and help safeguard and exemplify the university's mission. He will also serve on five committees, including Finance and Audit.
Torres had already built-up considerable experience in the financial field before he came to IU South Bend. His family in Mexico City ran small businesses, and he majored in accounting while pursuing his Bachelor of Business Administration degree at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Upon graduating in 1990, Torres took a job as a senior auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers International, subsequently moving on to a German transnational company, Hoechst AG (now Sanofi-Aventis.)
The environment of international commerce was fast-paced, complicated, and extremely interesting from the start. Working in Mexico and reporting to Germany, he observed the various methods his German colleagues had of sizing up local Mexican markets. Torres also took note of how the most critical breakthroughs often involved just knowing whom to consult, and what connections to make.
“We were working with people from Spain, people from Switzerland, people from Latin America. It’s truly global,” Torres said. “When you’re just immersed in your local thing, just your town, you can believe that your town is the universe. With these international businesses, I could see that the entire world was their playground.”
His responsibilities included financial transactions involving as many currencies as countries.
“I was in charge of paying invoices to Canada, invoices to the U.S., invoices to Germany, France, Spain, you name it. I would call the bank and ask the rate for the dollar, or for the German mark. There was no euro yet,” he said. “So, I learned how to trade all these different currencies.”
The next step for his career was to secure a business degree from an American university. His two primary goals became obtaining an MBA and getting his language skills certified via the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language.) The TOEFL had to come first. Ironically, part of the appeal of South Bend was that Torres knew he would get a crash course in English.
“When I first came to scout the area, I realized that there were almost no Latinos. At the time, it may have been 5% or less,” he said. “I knew I would be immersed in the culture and forced to speak the language.”
Torres credits the language intensive sessions at the IU South Bend chapter of The Language Company (TLC) for helping solidify the huge strides he quickly made.
It was around this time that the purchase of a simple Mother’s Day present ended up setting in motion a series of events that wound up making Torres the business titan that he is today. He arranged to send money to his sister in Mexico City to buy some flowers for their mother. Making the transaction, he discovered that the exchange practices were predatory.
“When I had to send money myself, I realized how horrible the exchange rate was. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. This is not the rate. Probably there’s something wrong,’” Torres said.
He called one of his colleagues in Germany, confirmed the current rates, and was appalled at the mark-ups.
“So, these guys are taking a big, huge spread. That’s horrible,” he said.
In a marketing class soon after this, the assignment was to come up with a business idea and write a business plan. His own experience gave him a sense of the need for a more just and fair method for Latino immigrants to conduct financial transactions internationally. After conducting market research and comparing practices in metropolitan areas and smaller cities, Torres identified a key trend.
“In the small towns, the large companies take advantage of immigrants because they have no competition. In bigger cities, they can’t do that, because there is more competition,” Torres said.
Torres envisioned a company that would serve immigrants in smaller cities, offering them a much better exchange rate. Since the profit margin had been exorbitantly high, he could present a lower rate while still coming out ahead. This kind of enterprise would require an infrastructure of personnel – many agents, employees, and partners performing a variety of tasks in cities all over the world. It would also require substantial banking support at the outset.
Big banks would want nothing to do with one student’s start-up, so Torres found a way to combine his pursuit of a business degree with his desire to create a real business. He could get in a banker’s door if he explained that he was gathering information for a research paper at a university.
“These were the exact people I wanted to do business with, so at the end of the interview, I would mention that there was something I was trying on my own,” he said.
These conversations were never likely to get him all his financing in one fell swoop, but one connection would recommend another, and soon Torres had a network of trusted allies.
“Suddenly, the guys who didn’t open the door at the beginning were calling and saying that they want to do business with me,” Torres recalled.
He founded InterCambio Express in 1999 and graduated from the Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics in 2000.
Over the years, Torres has kept InterCambio Express up with the technological trends --with the critical addition of a mobile app -- and expanded the company’s services to include features such as personal loans, car title loans, and tax preparation.
InterCambio Express now has around 2500 agents, operating in 48 states. Establishing services in California in particular required Torres to take on an especially daunting bureaucratic and legal battle, and his victory was so complete that it led to an article about the process in Hispanic Executive magazine in March of 2024.
“The only states we’re missing now are Hawaii and New York,” Torres said. “But we’re about to get licensed in Hawaii and New York too.”
Even as InterCambio Express gradually increased its geographical reach, Torres has stayed headquartered in Elkhart, and he has maintained a close relationship with his alma mater in South Bend.
“Because IUSB and a lot of professors were such a great resource for me while I started the business, I want to give back to the university,” Torres said. “It’s time to start naming stuff.”
A gift in 2019 resulted in the Isaac P. Torres Family Data Analytics Lab, and he has also endowed an ongoing Isaac P. Torres Family School of Business and Economics Scholarship. This fall, the Isaac Torres Family Lab Control Room will be part of the new health sciences simulation center in Parkside Hall.
