Tenth annual conference of the European Systemic Risk Board – Speakers

Programme

Christine Lagarde has been President of the European Central Bank (ECB) and, in this function, also Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board since November 2019.

Between 2011 and 2019 she served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that, she served as French Minister of Economy and Finance from 2007 to 2011, having been Trade Secretary from 2005 to 2007. A lawyer by background, she practised for 20 years with international law firm Baker McKenzie, of which she became Global Chair in 1999. She was the first woman to hold each of these positions.

In 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 President Lagarde was ranked the second most influential woman in the world by Forbes. She has also been recognised by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was named Officer in the French Order of the Legion of Honor in April 2012, Commander in the National Order of Merit in May 2021 and Grand Officer in the French Order of the Legion of Honor in July 2026.

Thorsten Beck is Director of the Florence School of Banking and Finance and Professor of Financial Stability at the European University Institute. He is Vice-Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board (2023-27) and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the CESifo. He was Professor of Banking and Finance at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) in London between 2013 and 2021 and Professor of Economics at Tilburg University from 2008 to 2014. He was also the founding Chair of the European Banking Center at Tilburg University from 2008 to 2013. Previously, he worked in the Research Department of the World Bank from 1997 to 2008. He holds a PhD from the University of Virginia and an MA from the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Gabriel Rodrigo Ribeiro Tavares Bernardino is a Portuguese citizen, 61 years old, married, and has two children. He holds a degree in Mathematics and a master’s degree in Statistics and Optimization from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

After a 22-year career at the Portuguese Insurance and Pension Fund Supervisory Authority, where he was Director-General from 2007 to 2011, he served as the first Chair of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) from 2011 to 2021. In November 2021, he assumed the Chairmanship of the Board of Directors of the Portuguese Securities and Exchange Commission (CMVM), a position he resigned from for health reasons.

From February till September 2025, he worked as a consultant for the World Bank, collaborating on the Financial Sector Assessment Programs (FSAPs). Since 22 September 2025, he is President of the Board of Directors of the Portuguese Insurance and Pensions Funds Supervisory Authority (ASF).

Ulrich Bindseil worked for 31 years in central banking: at Deutsche Bundesbank (1994-97), the European Monetary Institute (1997-1998) the European Central Bank (ECB) (1998-2025). At the ECB, he was Head of Risk Management (2005-2008), Director General of Market Operations (2012-2019) and Director General of Market Infrastructure and Payments (2019-2025).

He is currently Professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Prior to that, he was an Honorary Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin where he covered central banking, payments and financial stability issues.

His current research focuses on payment and market infrastructures, including cross border payments, and monetary innovations like stablecoins and CBDC. His books include “Monetary policy operations and the financial system” (Oxford University Press, 2015), Central Banking before 1800 – a rehabilitation (Oxford University Press, 2019), Introduction to central banking (with A Fotia, Springer, 2021) and Introduction to payments and market infrastructures (with G. Pantelopoulos, Springer, 2023). 

Claudia Buch is Chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, appointed on 1 January 2024. She is a member of the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS) of the Bank for International Settlements.

Claudia Buch was Vice-President of the Deutsche Bundesbank from May 2014 to December 2023. Prior to that, she served as President of the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Professor of Economics at the universities of Magdeburg and Tübingen, and a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. She worked at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, was awarded a doctoral degree and a habilitation (German post-doctoral degree) by the University of Kiel, and studied economics at the University of Bonn. 

Stephen G. Cecchetti is Professor and Rosen Family Chair in International Finance Emeritus at Brandeis University, Research Associate at the NBER, Research Fellow at the CEPR, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Vice-Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board.

From 2008 to 2013, Cecchetti served as Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements. From 1997 to 1999, he was Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In addition, he was a member of the faculty of The Ohio State University and the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, as well as Editor of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.

Cecchetti has published widely in academic and policy journals, is the author of a leading textbook in money and banking, and blogs at www.moneyandbanking.com. Professor Cecchetti holds an undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel.  

Andrea Enria is Senior Advisor at the Prudential Regulation Authority and a member of the Prudential Regulation Committee of the Bank of England, with a term of appointment from 20 March 2025 to 19 March 2028. He is also co-editor of the Forum on Financial Supervision, hosted by the Systemic Risk Centre of the London School of Economics.

He previously held key roles in European banking supervision. He served as Chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank (2019-2023), first Chairperson of the European Banking Authority (2011-2018) and Secretary General of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (2004-2008). He began his career in banking regulation and supervision at Banca d’Italia, where he held different roles and left as Head of the Regulation and Macroprudential Analysis Department.

He has a BA in Economics from Bocconi University and an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge. 

Stefan Ingves is Chair of Toronto Centre’s Board of Directors and the former Governor of the Central Bank of Sweden. He previously held the positions of Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Chair of the BIS Banking and Risk Management Committee (BRC).

Mr Ingves was previously a member of the General Council of the European Central Bank; First Vice-Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board; Governor for Sweden in the International Monetary Fund; and a board member of the Nordic-Baltic Macroprudential Forum (NBMF).

Mr Ingves is former Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision; Director of the Monetary and Financial Systems Department at the IMF; Deputy Governor of the Riksbank; and General Director of the Swedish Bank Support Authority. Prior to that, he was Head of the Financial Markets Department at the Swedish Ministry of Finance. Mr Ingves holds a PhD in Economics.

Klaas Knot was President of De Nederlandsche Bank from 1 July 2011 to 1 July 2025, a period during which he was also a member of the Governing Council and General Council of the European Central Bank, the General Board of the European Systemic Risk Board, the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund and the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements. He served as Chair of the G20’s Financial Stability Board from 2 December 2021 to 1 July 2025.

Knot currently runs his own strategic consultancy firm, KK Economic Advisory, where he advises European and Dutch public authorities on wide-ranging issues, including crisis management, central bank independence and financing public infrastructure. He is also a frequent speaker at international and national conferences and symposia.

Knot recently joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow and the CFA Institute Systemic Risk Council. Since 2019, he has been an active member of the Group of Thirty, a global advisory body comprising economic and financial leaders. He has been an Honorary Professor of Money and Banking at the University of Groningen since 2005 and an Honorary Professor of Monetary Stability at the University of Amsterdam since 2015.

Luc Laeven is Director General of the Directorate General Research of the European Central Bank. Prior to this, he worked at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

His research focuses on banking and international finance issues and has been widely published in academic journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. He has also published books on Systemic Risk, Crises and Macroprudential Regulation (MIT Press), Systemic Financial Crises: Containment and Resolution (Cambridge University Press), and Deposit Insurance Around the World: Issues of Design and Implementation (MIT Press).

He is Professor of Finance at Tilburg University, Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Chair of the ESCB Heads of Research Committee, Chair of the Steering Committee of the Euro Area Business Cycle Network, Editor of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and a member of the Board of Directors of TalentNomics. He studied at Tilburg University, the University of Amsterdam and the London School of Economics.

Xu Lu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. Her work combines theory with micro-level evidence to show how asset demand frictions shape aggregate outcomes in financial intermediation and monetary policy implementation.

Her current research agenda uses large-scale transaction-level bank data to study depositor behaviour and its implications for bank funding, financial stability, and monetary transmission. Her research shows that frictions in deposit demand generate deposit market power, link conventional and unconventional monetary policy, and create sign-switching interest-rate risk in deposits over the monetary cycle. In another line of work, she has shown how institutional rebalancing and the structure of active management shape asset prices and monetary transmission across asset classes.

She received her PhD from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2023 and her bachelor's degrees from Tsinghua University in 2017.

Francesco Mazzaferro has been the Head of the Secretariat of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) since January 2011. He also serves as a member of the Boards of Supervisors of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Under his leadership, the ESRB Secretariat has acted as the ESRB’s think tank and as a key pillar of the European Union's macroprudential oversight framework. Among other responsibilities, the Secretariat leads the ESRB's analytical, policy, data and institutional work, supporting the identification, assessment, and mitigation of systemic risks across the EU financial system. Furthermore, Mr Mazzaferro oversees the ESRB's institutional engagement and cooperation with central banks, supervisory authorities, European institutions and policymakers across the European Union, contributing to the strengthening of financial stability and resilience across both banking and non-bank financial sectors.

Prior to joining the ESRB Secretariat, Mr Mazzaferro held several senior positions at the European Central Bank (ECB), where he worked first on European Monetary Union planning and later on the ECB’s external relations in the neighbourhood of the euro area. Earlier in his career, he worked at the European Commission on the ECU and contributing to preparations for the introduction of the single currency. He holds a degree in Law from the University of Bologna in Italy, where he specialised in EU law and the legal aspects of the euro.

Loriana Pelizzon is Deputy Scientific Director, Department Director of Financial Markets and Coordinator of Gender Equality at the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE as well as Full Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt, where she holds the Chair of Law and Finance. She is also part-time Full Professor of Economics at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan and WFA CFAR Affiliate at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, USA.

She graduated from the London Business School with a doctorate in Finance. She has published extensively in leading international journals on topics including risk measurement and management, hedge funds, market microstructure, financial institutions, systemic risk, sovereign risk and financial crises. She has been involved in NBER and FDIC projects, as well as EU projects (Marie Curie, FP7 and H2020), Europlace and Inquire Europe, EIEF, Bank of France projects, MIUR, DFG and VolkswagenStiftung: Europe and Global Challenges.

She was a member of the EIOPA’s Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group and is currently President of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a member of the EU independent expert advice team in the field of Banking Union and an external expert for the European Commission on digital currency and blockchain technology.

Olli Rehn is Governor of the Bank of Finland and a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank as of 12 July 2018. Dr Rehn is also First Vice-Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).

Mr Rehn served as Vice-President of the European Commission from 2011–2014. As a member of the Commission, he was responsible for enlargement from 2004–2010 and for economic and monetary affairs from 2010-2014.

Before joining the central bank, Mr Rehn served as Minister of Economic Affairs. He has been a member of the Finnish and European Parliaments.

Mr Rehn holds a degree of Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in International Political Economy from the University of Oxford. His special interests include reading, football and cycling, sauna and the summer cottage.

Verena Ross is Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). She took up the role on 1 November 2021 and is responsible for representing the Authority, as well as preparing the work of and chairing its Board of Supervisors and Management Board.

Between 2011 and 2021, Verena Ross served as ESMA’s first Executive Director, when she was responsible for building up the organisation and overseeing its day to day running.

Prior to this, Verena held a number of senior posts in the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) and was a member of the FSA's Executive Committee. Verena joined the FSA in 1998 to run the Executive Chairman’s office during the regulator’s start-up phase and was briefly a seconded advisor to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission in 2000. She held various positions in the FSA’s Markets Division and was Director of Strategy and Risk Division before becoming Director of the International Division.

Verena is a German national. Following studies in Sinology and Economics in Hamburg, Taipei and London (SOAS), she began her career at the Bank of England in 1994, where she worked as an economist and banking supervisor.

Olaf Sleijpen is President of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). He is also a member of the Governing Council and General Council of the European Central Bank (ECB), a member of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), a Governor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).

Since 2007, he has been Professor of European Economic Policy at the Maastricht School of Business and Economics. Sleijpen joined DNB’s Executive Board in February 2020. As Director of Monetary Affairs, he was responsible for economic policy and research, financial stability, financial markets, payment systems and market infrastructure, cash operations and statistics. From 2011 to 2020, he worked as DNB’s Divisional Director of Supervision.

Olaf graduated with honours in Economics at the University of Maastricht in 1992. He obtained a doctorate in Economics at the University of Groningen in 1999. 

Boris Vujčić has been Vice-President of the European Central Bank since 1 June 2026. In this capacity, he is also a member of the Executive Board, the Governing Council, the General Council of the European Central Bank, and the General Board of the European Systemic Risk Board.

From 2012 until 2026, Mr Vujčić served as Governor of the Croatian National Bank, overseeing the country’s accession to the euro area in 2023. He has been Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Vienna Initiative since 2016.

In 2021, he was awarded the Lamfalussy Award for his lifetime achievement, with special emphasis on his key role in Croatia’s accession to the European Union and in the reform of Croatia’s monetary policy instruments.

Boris Vujčić holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zagreb. As an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics (2003-2026) and a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Mathematics (2004-2026), he maintained a strong connection to his alma mater.

Jeromin Zettelmeyer has been Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic policy think tank since September 2022. He was previously Deputy Director of the Strategy and Policy Review Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (2016-19), Director General for Economic Policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (2014-16); Director of Research and Deputy Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2008-2014) and an IMF staff member (1994-2008).

Jeromin’s recent work has focused on geopolitical change and reform in the EU, the EU fiscal framework, public debt sustainability, economic security and international climate finance. In addition to leading Bruegel, Jeromin is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and a member of the Euro50.

He holds an economics degree from the University of Bonn (1990) and a PhD in Economics from MIT (1995).