Virxhini Gjonzeneli

Chief Financial Officer

Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago

Boards:

Legal Aid Chicago
Chicago Commons

Member since:

2025

Membership Type:

Full

Accomplished finance and risk executive with experience in leading finance organizations, designing and implementing enterprise risk management frameworks and process reengineering. Proven leader with a strong ability to analyze diverse business, technical, and operational issues, bridging gaps and breaking silos between groups and processes. Key skills include asset liability management, mortgage finance, financial analysis, process reengineering, change management, business resiliency, enterprise risk management, operations, project execution, and team management. Strong communicator with excellent team-building skills and a passion for coaching. Experience Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago Serve as a member of the Executive Team and participate in leadership decisions regarding the strategy and tactics of a $120bn wholesale lender. Managed different initiatives, and teams with increasing responsibilities. EVP, CFO and Group Head Financial Accounting and Markets 2023-current Lead the finance organization, including accounting policy and operations, capital markets, procurement, strategic planning, and analytics and data strategy.
● Oversee the team responsible for a $120bn balance sheet, including pricing, debt issuance, investments, liquidity, hedging, and capital management, resulting in net interest income of $1.1bn in 2023.
● Oversee financial reporting to ensure accuracy and timeliness of financial statements and disclosures.
● Collaborate with the CEO and other C-suite executives to shape and execute the organization’s strategic vision.
● Lead financial planning and analysis efforts, including budgeting, forecasting, and investments.
● Represent the Bank on the governing council supporting the 11 FHLBanks’ mortgage activities.
● Drive organization wide data transformation efforts to improve data quality, accessibility, and analytics capabilities.
● Foster a culture of innovation and growth in the finance organization.
● Lead a matrix organization responsible for secondary mortgage market operations in Illinois and Wisconsin. EVP, Group Head Member Support and Strategy 2021-2022 SVP, Group Head Member Product Support and Strategic Initiatives 2020-2021 SVP, Group Head Member Strategic Initiatives 2018-2020
● Managed the core operations supporting advances, letters of credit and investment activities for a $120bn balance sheet.
● Responsible for organization-wide business resiliency including successfully transitioning entire workforce to fully remote operations during Covid.
● Led the Bank’s operational excellence change initiative. Managed a team of internal consultants that helped the Bank assess the most effective ways to support our customers and assisted Bank staff in redesigning processes and supporting technology. Senior Vice President, Director of Enterprise Risk Management 2015-2018 Created a department responsible for monitoring the strategic risk of the Bank, independent oversight of the mortgage aggregation business, and establishing integrated risk reporting across the various risks the Bank faces.
● Identified and analyzed key risks facing the Bank, including creating a risk appetite statement and defining KRI/KPIs to measure performance.
● Responsible for the identification, evaluation, mitigation, and monitoring of the Bank’s strategic risks.
● Developed tools, practices, and policies to analyze and report enterprise risks, and to manage risks according to an enterprise risk management framework.
● Worked with business line risk managers to monitor and analyze risks within the business units.
● Assisted in the creation of operational risk and model risk frameworks. Vice President, Manager Markets Credit Analysis 2010 – 2015 Led a team of analysts responsible for monitoring the credit risk of the Bank’s investment portfolio and mortgage aggregation business, as well as evaluating and establishing haircuts for the Bank’s $80bn collateral portfolio).
● Responsible for the preparation of investments credit analysis, stress testing and scenario analysis required for calculating other than temporary impairments (OTTI).
● Responsible for classifying assets, stress testing, scenario analysis, and allowance for loan losses (ALL) for loan portfolio.
● Collaborated with team members across the organization to enhance the risk framework around the mortgage aggregation business and to develop new products.
● Established lendable values for approximately $ 80bn of securities and loan collateral pledged to support the Bank’s assets.
● Increased the acceptable collateral base.
● Assisted in mitigating and managing the risk of weak counterparties, including negotiating with the FDIC. Assistant Vice President, Senior Markets Credit Analyst 2007 – 2010 Transitioned the monitoring of credit risk for the Bank’s portfolio of private issue MBS securities and whole loans into the Credit area. Built and implemented the process for monitoring and assessing the credit risk of these portfolios.
● Developed stress testing methodology and OTTI analysis for portfolio of private issue securities (subprime, Alt-A and prime jumbo).
● Modeled cashflows, analyzed deal structure, and examined collateral characteristics of portfolio of private issue securities.
● Analyzed credit risk on $20 billion portfolio of conventional mortgage loans, including loan loss reserves, and the risks of counterparties associated with the mortgage loans.
● Analyzed private issue securities and whole loans offered as collateral to create a collateral base for customers.
● Created and presented reports to internal management, external auditors, and regulators. Senior Business Analyst and Business Analyst 2003-2007 Provided analytics, business support and reporting on an $80 billion mortgage loan program. Education The University of Chicago Booth School of Business Chicago, Illinois Master of Business Administration with High Honor 2009-2011 Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois Bachelor of Arts in Economics 1999-2003 Magna cum Laude, Departmental Honors, Frederick S. Deibler Award for Excellence in Economics Additional Skills & Qualifications
● CFA Charterholder and member of CFA Society of Chicago
● Certified as a Financial Risk Manager
● Co-Chair of Board of Legal Aid Chicago
● Board of Chicago Commons
● Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow

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