Strategic planning for central banks: Delivering change, measuring success and meeting objectives

Massimiliano Di Teodoro is a senior expert in strategic planning, cost analysis, and performance management at the Bank of Italy. He holds a degree in Economics (1994) and a post‑graduate Master in International Marketing and Foreign Trade (1995). He joined the Bank of Italy in 1996 after an early experience as Product Manager in the industrial automation sector.

Over his career, he has led or contributed to key initiatives in budgeting, cost‑accounting methodologies, operational risk assessment, digitalisation of administrative processes, and development of business‑intelligence tools. His responsibilities have included the management of the Bank’s budgeting system, the design of the multiyear budgeting model and the development of forecasting models for the balance sheet.

He has been actively involved in Eurosystem working groups and task forces on cost assessment, definition of cost‑sharing schemes and pricing policies for payment and cash services and in the development of the harmonised Eurosystem cost‑accounting and cost‑benefit analysis methodologies. He is also member of the ECB budget Committee and participates in the ECB budget assessment and monitoring process. 

Anna Maria Viscardi – Banca d’Italia

Head of Strategic Planning and Budget Division, Planning and control Directorate

Anna Maria Viscardi is a senior expert in strategic planning, budgeting, and governance at the Bank of Italy. She holds a degree in Economics (1999) and a postgraduate specialization in Political Economy (2001).

She currently serves as Head of the Strategic Planning and Budget Division within the Planning and control Directorate, leading the Bank’s three‑year strategic planning and budget cycles. In these fields, she is also responsible for monitoring strategic alignment across key planning domains (HR, IT, and property) and supporting Bank’s senior managers in committees of international organizations (ECB, BIS, EBA).

She has extensive experience in expenditure control, procurement governance, KPI development, operational risk management, and integrated planning systems.

Her background includes roles in budget management, spending controls, procurement compliance, and the development of internal control and administrative risk‑measurement systems.

Alexis Corbett was appointed Chief Operating Officer, effective May 2024. In this capacity, she oversees the Bank of Canada’s corporate departments and operations, as well as the currency function, and she is a member of the Bank’s Executive Council. Along with information technology, cyber security and risk, her portfolio includes other corporate functions such as financial services and human resources.

Alexis is also chair of the Canadian Financial Sector Resiliency Group, a public-private partnership led by the Bank of Canada, with a mandate to enhance the operational resilience of Canada’s critical financial sector and coordinate crisis responses in the financial sector during system-wide operational incidents.  

Ms. Corbett joined the Bank in 2011 as Director of Human Resources (HR), a business line within the Corporate Services Department. She was promoted to Managing Director and Chief Human Resources Officer in 2014, when Human Resources was made a separate department, where she led a multi-year effort to modernize every aspect of HR. Alexis’s leadership contributed to the Bank being recognized as a Top 100 Employer in Canada, and she was named Canada’s “HR Leader of the Year” in 2018, a prestigious annual award from HRD Magazine.

Before she joined the Bank, Ms. Corbett worked for more than 15 years in operations and human resources for Canada Post Corporation in progressively senior and diverse positions.

Born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Ms. Corbett has a master’s degree in business administration from the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa and a B.A. degree from the University of Western Ontario. In 2024, she received her ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors, a program focused on governance excellence. She is a graduate of the Advanced Program in Human Resources Management from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and has held a Certified Human Resources Leader designation since July 2001.