Monica Defend

Monica has been Head of the Amundi Institute since February 2022. Previous to that, Monica has been Global Head of Research, a member of the Global Investment Committee and the Advisory Board at Amundi since 2019. In her role, she contributes to the definition of Amundi’s investments strategy on financial markets. The team relies on a strong quantitative approach: it analyses the trends and fluctuations of financial markets in order to define short, medium and long term forecasts, highlighting the main investment themes. A distinctive feature of the team is the tight collaboration with the investment platforms for the generation of integrated investment ideas.

She was previously Deputy Head of Group Research and member of the Global Investment Committee of Amundi since 2017. In her role, she contributes to defining Amundi’s investment strategy on financial markets. Prior to that, she was Global Head of Asset Allocation Research and previously Head of Quantitative Research at Pioneer Investments. Monica started her career in the investment industry in 1997 following a role as University assistant for the Advanced Econometrics department at Bocconi University.

Monica holds a Masters’ degree in Economics (Bocconi University) and Financial Economics from the London Business School and Bocconi University. Furthermore, she was selected for the UniCredit Young Talents Program and the Management and Banking Academy, obtaining afterwards an MBA degree at the London Business School.