Maria J Nieto 

Dr. Maria J Nieto’s career spans a wide range of experiences in central banking, international financial institutions, government and academia in the field of financial stability, economics and policy making. Her recent research focuses on climate risks and their implications for financial stability. Her publications aim to provide guidance to competent authorities to account for the existence of climate risks in financial policies.

Background

Maria has held senior advisory and managerial positions at Banco de España in the fields of financial stability and European economic policy. Since 2018, she has contributed to various work streams of the Network for Greening the Financial System, particularly focusing on climate risk scenarios and their supporting models. Additionally, she has been member of the task force on nature-related risks. Maria previously represented Banco de España in working groups of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the European Commission.

For over eight years, she was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, working with the Financial Markets and Economic Team on financial integration and its implications for safety nets. As a senior economist at the European Central Bank, (ECB), Maria spent more than three years forecasting economic developments of euro area countries.

Maria served as an advisor to the Spanish President and was part of the teams that negotiated Spain’s entry into the euro area.

She worked as a senior financial sector expert for the IMF, both at headquarters and as an external consultant for over ten years. She worked in Financial Sector Stability Assessment Programs, provided technical assistance, and contributed to the IMF research.

Maria has published in journals like the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Stability and the European Business Law Review. She has presented at American and European financial association meetings and universities such as LSE (FMG) and Bocconi. She serves on the advisory boards of the Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, the Journal of Financial Regulation, and the Central Banking Training Advisory Board.

María holds a PhD cum laude in chemistry from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and an MBA in finance from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She was awarded the Ramón Areces scholarship.

Research interests

• Scenario based analysis of climate related risks and applications to the financial system
• EU sustainability regulation of financial and non-financial corporates
• Transition policies and climate risk adaptation