He was born in Rieti on 5 March 1959, and attended the University of Siena, from which he graduated summa cum laude in Economics and Banking in 1981.
He joined the Bank of Italy at the end of 1982 at the Siena Branch where he worked in banking supervision, also taking part in on-site inspections. He was then transferred to the Banking and Financial Supervision Area of the Head Office in Rome, initially in charge of drawing up the reporting and supervisory rules for direct and indirect credit control instruments and working on the problems in special credit.
In the early 1990s, he was appointed to the Banking Groups Supervision Department and worked in detail on the privatization process, the restructuring and rehabilitation of the Italian banking system, and the first risk measurement models; he was also involved in financial innovation operations and established 'early warning' procedures for risk analysis. From 1998 to 2006, he was Head of the Division that supervised the major banking groups and as such he coordinated the initial work to examine and check the internal systems that had been set up to determine the capital requirements in relation to credit and market risk. He was also involved in the analyses of the financial and economic impact on the main banks of the restructuring of some of Italy's leading industrial groups. From 2006 to 2008, as Head of the Supervision Methods and Procedures Division, he coordinated the production of the new Handbook on Banking Supervision.
After a short period as a senior manager in the Banking Groups Supervision Department, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Supervisory Regulations and Policies Department in 2009. In that capacity, his duties included coordinating the rules review that was necessary in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis and implementing the new international rules on capital assets (Basel III). In 2014 and 2015, he was Head of the Regulation and Macroprudential Analysis Directorate.
He has been Deputy Head of the Banking and Financial Supervision Directorate General (DG) since 15 November 2015. In this capacity, he has continued to supervise the consultancy work for drawing up laws and regulations to preserve the stability of important areas of the Italian banking system and the orderly management of significant crises. He has assisted the Head of the DG in managing the crises of several banks and in finding ways to resolve them. In the early months of 2020, he coordinated the work to define and later negotiate at European level the reporting and prudential rules for facilitating the extraordinary measures to support the economy introduced by European financial systems during the most serious phase of the pandemic crisis.
He has represented the Bank of Italy on many occasions, including in technical groups at international level. He sat on the Basel Committee for banking supervision on matters of prudential control for capital and liquidity risks and was a member of the groups of experts instituted within the European Council, most recently for the establishment of the single supervisory system as part of the Banking Union project. He is a member of a Financial Stability Board Steering Group that has coordinated work on the resolution of cross-border banking crises. He took part in drawing up memorandums of understanding with the supervisory authorities of several countries, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where the Italian banking system has a strong presence. He was a member of the Bank of Italy - Consob Coordinating Technical Committee and worked on the banking supervision technical assistance project for Russia and Egypt.
He is an alternate member of the Board of Supervisors and of the Management Board of the European Banking Authority (EBA).
He has represented the Bank on the Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA) since early 2020, having been an alternate member there since 2014 and a member of the Management Board until 2018. Since the end of 2018, he has chaired one of the EBA's standing committees tasked with coordinating the work on supervisory reporting, the third pillar systems set up by banks, data analysis and creating a Europe-wide reporting system. He is an alternate member of the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision.
He has authored and co-authored various publications on banking and finance.
