As per the recent announcement made by the Swiss financial market supervisory Authority – FINMA, it has a new Head of Asset Management division. Thomas Hirschi, who has been hired by Swiss regulatory authority, will join the firm and take up his new role starting from 1st January 2020. As per the announcement, aside from taking up the role of Head of Asset Management, he will also join the regulatory authority’s executive board.
Thomas Hirschi is currently working as Executive Director at Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi located in Abu Dhabi Global Market Authorities, building up to a period of nearly four years now as per information in his LinkedIn profile. ADGM is an international financial centre situated in Al Maryah Island, the northeastern part of Abu Dhabi – Capital city of United Arab Emirates. At FSRA in ADGM, Hirschi is responsible for authorising and supervising banks and insurance companies in his role as executive director. The Swiss asset management division is made up of nearly 50 executives and the main role and responsibility of members of this division include authorising institutions, collective investment schemes, and supervision of approved company/organisations and their products.
The division currently supervises a huge list of firms and financial ventures consisting of nearly 9800 investment funds and 730 organisations. However, this is not his first rodeo with Swiss regulatory authority as he has previously worked with Swiss Watchdog for more than a decade prior to joining Abu Dhabi regulatory authority from July 2004 to September 2015 according to his LinkedIn profile.
While serving at FINMA, he held various roles and gained experience in various verticals such as Implementation of Regulations, Model Approval, Stress testing, and Capital Markets Supervision. At the time of his resignation from FINMA, he was serving in the role of Head Risk Management, mostly focusing on banking firms. Thomas started his career in the finance sector as an Associate at JP Morgan & Chase in their business risk management division where he worked for nearly 3 years before migrating to FINMA. According to a press release from FSRA, he has served his notice of resignation from his current role at the firm which is expected to come into effect during Q4, 2019.
Speaking on his resignation from the firm, Richard Teng, CEO of FSRA mentioned that Thomas was instrumental in formulating the present working structure of regulatory authority as he was one of the core members of the FSRA management team which created the current framework, policies and processes governing licensing and supervision of banks and insurance sector firms.
Teng commented, “While his departure is a loss to the team, we are glad that he has been presented with the opportunity to shape the asset management landscape in Switzerland as an Executive Board member of FINMA. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours and look forward to the continued collaboration with FINMA”. Speaking on the same topic, Mark Branson, CEO of FINMA commented, “I am delighted that Thomas Hirschi is joining FINMA’s Executive Board. As a leader with international experience, Thomas is well aware of the specific challenges facing supervisory authorities, but he is also very familiar with FINMA and the Swiss financial centre”. It should be noted that the Swiss regulatory authority’s executive board becomes whole once again as Thomas’s arrival at the firm can be considered as a replacement for Michael Loretan whose post remained vacant since he passed away as per comments from FINRA spokesperson.
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