He was born in Naples on 27 January 1965, and is married with three children. He graduated with honours in Law from the Università degli Studi Federico II in Naples in 1988, and then qualified to practise law.
He joined Banca d'Italia in 1991, working in human resources management for about seven years. He then moved to the Analysis Division of the Refinancing and Clearing Department. Here he was involved in important projects, including the reform of the financial markets under the Consolidated Law on Finance, the changeover to the euro, and the launch of the Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross settlement Express Transfer (TARGET) system.
At the end of 1999, he moved to payment systems oversight, and then to the Market Oversight Directorate, becoming Head of the Payment Instruments and Services Division in 2008. In this role, he participated in international and European coordination organizations and in World Bank technical assistance programmes.
In 2014, during Italy's presidency of the EU Council, he chaired two EU Council Working Parties: one on the revision of the Payment Services Directive (PSD), and the other on the proposed regulation on interbank fees for card-based payment transactions. For the latter, he also represented the Council in the negotiations with the European Parliament and the Commission (trilogue meetings), which ended with the approval of the Regulation.
In 2017, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Supervisory Institutional Relations Directorate where, among other things, he liaised with other authorities and institutions and dealt with issues relating to the safeguarding of legality in the financial system. He was also involved in the authorization process for banking and financial activities, and coordinated FinTech development projects.
In 2020, he became Head of the newly established Retail Payment Instruments and Services Directorate, which is responsible for oversight in the retail payments sector and for coordinating FinTech issues. In this role, he became a member of the Bank for International Settlements' Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), monitoring the main issues relating to the digitalization of payments and financial markets.
In December 2022, he was appointed Deputy Director General for Currency Circulation and Retail Payments, thereby also taking on the role of Head of the Milano Hub Innovation Centre. In this capacity, he dealt with financial innovation and the development of the entire payment instrument chain, including banknote production and circulation.
In May 2025, he was appointed Secretary General of Banca d'Italia, with effect from 1 June; from that date, he also became responsible for the Directorate General for Human Resources and Information.
