Martina Bignami

Born in Milan on 29 September 1965, she is married with 3 children.

In 1989 she graduated in Economic and Social Sciences (D.E.S.) at the Luigi Bocconi Commercial University of Milan, with a dissertation on economics and international monetary policy. She obtained a scholarship at the Centre for Monetary and Financial Economics Paolo Baffi at the same University until 1991, when she won the public competition for Co-assistants organized by the Bank of Italy and started working at the Milan headquarters, where she was assigned to the off-site and on-site supervision over small banks.

In 1995 she moved to the Central administration of the Bank of Italy in Rome, where she was assigned to the Supervisory Methods and Procedure Division of the Banking Supervision Department, charged with the off-site supervision of all the banks. She worked in this division until 2008, dealing with the development of banking analysis procedures, methods of evaluation and measuring of banking risks, and the drafting of the supervisory handbook.

From 2003 to 2005 she attended training courses in finance at the London School of Economics, represented the Bank of Italy in various national and international fora (IWCFC) dealing with the implementation of the first Directive on financial conglomerates, was responsible for the validation of the internal models on credit risk of a leading banking group.

In 2006 she was promoted to Director. She coordinated internal working groups for the alignment of risk assessment methodologies and capital adequacy of large banking groups to the new regulatory environment and for the drafting of secondary supervisory regulations implementing the new regulatory framework "Basel II".

From 2008 to 2014 she was Head of the Specialist Risk Support Division within the newly established Banking Group Supervision Directorate. She coordinated the activities for the validation of internal models for credit, market and operational risk of large groups; developed a framework for monitoring and assessing bank liquidity risk at domestic level; was a member of the Financial Stability Report Drafting Committee.

From January 2014 to September 2015, she was director (Principal Director from 15 July 2015) at the disposal of the Directorate for Coordination and External Relations (a new unit established after the restructuring of Supervision resulting from the launch of the SSM), with tasks of coordination of aggregate risk analyses of banking and financial intermediaries supervised by the Department.

In September 2015 she was seconded to IVASS’ Prudential Supervision Directorate, where on 9 November she became Deputy Head of Directorate. Since 1 March 2017 she has been Head of the Supervisory Regulations and Policies Directorate.

She participated from time to time in international groups set up at the Basel Committee, Joint Forum, CEBS, EBA (more recently: Standing Committee on Oversight and Practices, SCOP), ECB Risk Analysis Network (Ria Network) dealing with issues related to the quantification of banking risks, their mitigation, the assessment of capital adequacy and the liquidity position of banks.

Author of publications and rapporteur in conferences and seminars on banking.