Risk Awards 2021: the winners

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted every corner of the financial system in 2020, slamming markets and testing the industry’s resilience like never before. The past 12 months have been stressful and sad; but they have also been wild and inspiring.

The common thread that runs through many of this year’s awards is of people doing their jobs, at a time when those jobs became far more difficult – and in some cases, far more important. If the 2008 financial crisis revealed a poorly understood web of counterparty risk, the coronavirus stressed many other links in the chains of risk transfer and risk management that keep the financial markets working. Some of those links broke when they were most needed. Many of them held.

As examples, over the course of this week, we’ll be recognising a bank that propped up key players in the US financial system during the worst of the pandemic; an exchange that was able to digest a huge increase in volume thanks to some unglamorous – but critical – plumbing work; a dealer that saw one specific aspect of the crisis coming and built client inventory as a result; a hedge fund that posted a near-100% return in a tail risk strategy; a quant investor that was up through all four quarters of the year; and many similar stories.

The awards have also had to adapt to the pandemic. In years past, Risk.net has honoured the winners at an awards ceremony in London. This year, we’ll be announcing the winners virtually, and publishing the articles that explain our choices, over the course of four days. We will also be running a trio of webinars that draw out some of the themes of the awards and roll them forwards – we all know what the recent past looked like; what does that mean for the near future? And we will be hearing from 17 of our winners as we go.

To view the announcements, interviews and webinars in real-time, please visit here. This article will also be updated daily with more winners and articles explaining our choices.   

As always, picking the winners was extremely difficult. Risk.net asked candidates to submit detailed information on their businesses, and shortlisted firms were interviewed off the record. Risk.net then gathered feedback from clients and other market participants.

The final decisions were made by Risk.net’s editors and journalists, weighing a number of factors, including risk management, creativity and innovation, liquidity provision, quality of service and customer satisfaction, and engagement with regulatory issues.

Where decisions were tight, client feedback often helped settle the issue. The Risk.net editorial team thanks all this year’s participants for their time and help. The profiles of our winners will be published below. Keep checking back as we add more articles over the next several days.

Lifetime achievement
Ken Griffin

Derivatives house of the year
Citi

Interest rate derivatives house of the year
Citi

Equity derivatives house of the year
Citi

Currency derivatives house of the year
BNP Paribas

Credit derivatives house of the year
Credit Suisse

Structured products house of the year
Credit Suisse

Inflation house of the year
NatWest Markets

Risk solutions house of the year
Santander

Flow market-maker of the year
Citadel Securities 

Sovereign risk manager of the year 
Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance

Bank risk manager of the year
Deutsche Bank

Credit portfolio manager of the year
BNP Paribas

Investment house of the year
Amundi

Hedge fund of the year
Saba Capital Management

Quant investment firm of the year
Nordea Asset Management

Exchange of the year
CME Group

Clearing house of the year
Eurex Clearing

OTC infrastructure service of the year
Capitalab

OTC trading platform of the year
Fenics GO

Derivatives client clearer of the year
JP Morgan

Foreign exchange prime broker of the year
HSBC

Hedging adviser of the year
Rothschild

Research house of the year
Societe Generale

Law firm of the year
Linklaters

Innovation in risk management
Credit Suisse

Innovation in execution
Credit Suisse

Technology innovation of the year
Scotiabank

Technology vendor of the year
Murex

Rising stars in quant finance
Iuliia Manziuk and Bastien Baldacci

Buy-side quants of the year
Alex Lipton and Marcos Lopez de Prado

Quants of the year
Jim Gatheral and Mathieu Rosenbaum