Born in Roma in 1966, he graduated with honours in Economics and Finance, specializing in International Financial Markets, from the LUISS 'Guido Carli' University of Rome in 1990.
After serving as an officer in the Italian Financial Police, he started his professional career in the private reinsurance sector, where he mainly worked in the finite-risk business and on structured reinsurance products for natural events.
He joined the Bank of Italy in 1995 and began working in the Banking and Financial Supervision Department at the Parma Branch. In 1998, he was assigned to the Banking Supervision Department at the Bank's Head Office in Rome, where he joined the team supervising Italy's then largest cross-border banking group.
Over the years, he went on to hold various positions of increasing responsibility, both as policy maker and line supervisor, including leading teams on specialized tasks (e.g. innovative capital instruments, securitizations, credit derivatives and structured finance), as well as contributing to the relevant projects of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). In 2004, he was a member of the BCBS Expanded Secretariat that helped to draft the BCBS Revised International Capital Framework (known as 'Basel II').
From 2005 to 2009, he worked in the Directorate-General for Internal Market at the European Commission, where he contributed to the development of the EU banking policy and international financial reform in the aftermath of the great financial crisis.
In 2009, he joined and subsequently became Head of the International Cooperation Division at the Bank of Italy, which was responsible for the development of the Bank's regulatory and supervisory policies.
Following the establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) in 2014, he joined the European Central Bank (ECB) as Deputy Director General of Microprudential Supervision 4, where he contributed to the development of the horizontal and specialized functions of the SSM. Over the years, his portfolio of responsibilities covered a wide range of SSM-wide projects including, but not limited to, crisis management arrangements, supervisory policies and methodologies, risk assessment and strategic planning, on-site inspections, stress testing and AML-related prudential tasks.
In addition, he has served, in different capacities, on several FSB, BCBS and EU project teams committees, also chairing the BCBS working groups that developed the Basel III post-crisis regulatory reforms, including those relating to regulatory capital, advanced credit risk management and banks' interaction with CCPs. Furthermore, he has also contributed to steering FSB projects on cyber resilience.
