Dharrini Bala Gadiyaram, Global Head of Risk Products at Bloomberg, won Excellence in RiskTech at Markets Media Group’s 2024 Women in Finance Awards.
What have been the main drivers of your success?
Dharrini Bala Gadiyaram, Bloomberg
I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of an incredible team – since the inception of our Multi Asset Risk Solutions, MARS for short, we’ve always functioned like a startup within Bloomberg. This means every member of the team shows up prepared to learn from our clients and the fast-changing market we operate in and putting in the hard work to get things done, while coming up with exciting ideas for how we can incorporate technological advancements into our solutions. Having a great idea is just ten percent of the way to success – bringing that vision to life, and actually delivering the value is crucial for any business, especially one that moves as fast as ours. That’s why my mantra has always been “execution eats strategy for breakfast”.
How do you think RiskTech will evolve over the next five years, and what impact will it have on the financial industry?
The explosive advancements in generative AI and data science across the market have created some very exciting opportunities for RiskTech. The role of a risk officer involves looking at a host of different immediate threats, growing perils and long-tail risks, and so a lot of the evolution in the next few years is going to be around helping them understand, quantify, prioritize and manage all the risks that their firm is exposed to. This includes some newer risks – climate risk is a bit farther along in the journey but the market is still at the very beginning of understanding the financial impact of geopolitical risk and cybersecurity risk. We may also see AI risk added to the roster – we are seeing applications of AI in so many different parts of the industry, that the degree to which they have been tested, the explainability of the results of these applications and the reputational risk it could pose is going to emerge as a key issue.
What subjects interested you the most during your college days?
I graduated with a degree in Computer Science, and my favorite subject was neural networks. In fact, my thesis was on personalized search using contextual dimensions – training a neural network model based on a user’s preferred search terms and choice of results, and this was way before Google made it cool!
What excites you about the Financial industry?
The best parts of the Financial Industry, the most interesting stories, are always at the end of the value chain where you have the opportunity to see the real world impact of your work. I started my career on commodities trading desks where I could see how trading with us helped airlines, oil refiners and electric utilities reduce business impact of commodity price variations and survive incredibly challenging market environments. On the risk technology side, I love hearing from our customers about how our risk signals helped them manage exposures that could have had a major impact on their portfolios, or when we help them comply with regulatory needs so they can keep their focus on value generation for their business. In areas of risk that are still evolving, such as climate, I’m excited about working with our clients, regulators and industry organizations on formulating a lens that captures the financial impact of that risk in a credible manner, and allows our customers in turn to apply that lens to identify risks and opportunities across their portfolios.
Start your career with a growth mindset and plenty of humility. And once you’re on that path, when you are offered big opportunities that you may not feel ready for, learn to see yourself through the eyes of those who believe in you and see your potential, and just say YES!
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