Sigríður Benediktsdóttir appointed to Danish Systemic Risk Council
Sigríður Benediktsdóttir, Director of the Central Bank of Iceland Financial Stability Department, has been appointed to Denmark’s newly established Systemic Risk Council.
The Danish Minister of Business and Growth, Annette Vilhelmsen, appoints the members of the Council, which comprises 10 individuals, including representatives from Danmarks Nationalbank (the Danish central bank), the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA), and ministries of business and growth, ministry of finance, and ministry of economic affairs and the interior, as well as three independent experts. Sigríður is appointed as one such expert. The Governor of the Danish central bank chairs the Council.
The role of the Systemic Risk Council is to monitor the financial sector and identify the accumulation of systemic risks in Denmark. The Council, which is an advisory body, will communicate its views on developments that may increase systemic risk and potentially lead to financial instability. It can then issue warnings about increasing systemic risk and make recommendations to the FSA or the government on initiatives that can help to reduce or prevent the development of such risks. These recommendations are to be followed by a “comply or explain” response within three months from the delivery of the recommendation.
Sigríður Benediktsdóttir joined the staff of the Central Bank of Iceland on 1 January 2012. Previously she was a lecturer and associate chair of the Economics Department at Yale University. Sigríður received a BS in economics from the University of Iceland in 1995 and a BS in computer science from the same school in 1998. She completed her doctoral degree in economics at Yale University in May 2005.
Beginning in 2007, Sigríður taught at Yale University and served as associate chair of the Economics Department. Concurrent with that work, she carried out research in the field of financial economics, with emphasis on financial markets. She worked as an economist for the US Federal Reserve Bank in the United States from 2005-2007. She was appointed to the Parliamentary Special Investigation Commission on the Icelandic banking collapse in 2008.
Sigríður Benediktsdóttir’s appointment to the Danish Systemic Risk Council is both an honour for her personally and a gesture of recognition of the recent work done in this area within the Central Bank of Iceland. The Central Bank of Iceland hopes that her participation in the Council will foster sharing of experience between the two countries and prove useful to Iceland in the development of risk monitoring and responses to systemic risk in the financial system.
Further information can be obtained from Már Guðmundsson, Governor of the Central Bank, and Sigríður Benediktsdóttir, Director of the Financial Stability Department, at tel: +354 569-9600.
No. 6/2013
25. February 2013