Profile: Srichander Ramaswamy

Position: Senior Economist, Committee on the Global Financial System

From day to day, I monitor market developments, looking for important events that might affect financial stability. Over the course of a few months, I collate these issues and write monitoring notes for the bimonthly meetings of senior central bankers. In addition, I'm constantly in touch with working group members from the various central banks on special projects, and this involves quite a bit of coordination and drafting, so it's a very varied role.

My background is quite unusual: I studied aerospace engineering before going into banking. I worked at Credit Suisse in Zurich before I joined the BIS, and initially I spent nine years in the Banking Department here, then six months in risk control, before moving over to the MED. In the Banking Department, I helped build an in-house portfolio risk management system. This was a really exciting project, and our traders told me that they were happier with the system I'd developed than with anything commercially available. Of course, I had a lot of management support at every stage.

I really like the work/life balance I get here: compared to London or New York, there's virtually no commuting. In fact, I live just 10 minutes' walk from the office. Sometimes I find myself working into the evening, when I'm dealing with contacts in North America, and if I need to communicate with clients in Asia-Pacific I need to be in by half past seven. However, the compact nature of Basel means that I get an extra couple of hours' leisure time compared to commuting into a larger city.

The other thing that really sets the BIS apart is the relatively flat management structure. I can speak to the Head of the MED without an appointment if I need to - that wouldn't happen in a larger organisation!