Vendor professional of the year (trading and risk)—Irina Slobodyanyuk, Numerix

Irina Slobodyanyuk, product specialist on Numerix’s risk product management team, wins the vendor professional of the year (trading and risk) category in this year’s Women in Technology and Data Awards. As a product manager for the XVA module of Numerix Oneview, the firm’s flagship offering, Slobodyanyuk focuses primarily on designing functionality for the platform, while also supporting pre-sales as the subject matter expert for risk.

It’s fair to say that the recipient of dual MSc degrees in quantitative finance and finance with a risk management concentration from Hofstra University has valuation adjustments in her blood. When asked about what she is most proud of with respect to her contribution at Numerix, Slobodyanyuk cites her XVA work—valuation adjustments pertaining to derivatives held by capital markets firms—and the role she played in productizing it within Oneview. “I am most proud of bringing the XVA module to fruition,” she explains. “It’s probably our most well-developed product in the Oneview solution, and we’ve incorporated a number of really complex measures and improved its performance quite a bit.”

Slobodyanyuk explains that margin valuation adjustment (MVA) and capital valuation adjustment (KVA) are the two risk measures most on clients’ radars, given the regulatory implications and potential financial losses on the back of inadequate disciplines and controls. “With respect to MVA, as the regulations change, more and more institutions are finding that they have to post initial margin, which means that now it is a real cost that they have to think about, not just for today but also in terms of how that will change in the future,” she says. “They really need to get a handle on their risk because they could be putting on trades that are actually non-profitable. KVA is less standardized [than MVA] because it is institutionally specific—all firms’ capital needs are different and so they need to get an individual handle on the capital they need to set aside for regulatory compliance.”

When it comes to people who have positively impacted her career, Slobodyanyuk points to a past colleague who rose to the top in arguably the most male-dominated function across the capital markets: trading. “At my last job, there was a female trader trading the most complex securities traded at that firm and she always brought a sense of kindness to the role—she was always willing to help others and I feel that early in my career that was very helpful for me,” she says.