Hilary Till

Hilary Till is a statistician and author with expertise in programming, modeling, and artificial intelligence. Her professional experiences span all the major asset classes, including fixed income, equities, commodities, foreign exchange, and alternative investments.

Till is a principal of Chicago-based Premia Capital Management, LLC and a consultant with Premia Research LLC. She provides advice to large institutions on risk management, portfolio analysis, quantitative modeling, and derivatives strategies. For example, she (a) advised Nuveen Investments on hedging strategies for the firm’s $50-billion municipal bond fund complex; (b) served as an advisory board member for a natural resources fund-of-hedge-funds; (c) provided lectures to staff from the Chinese financial industry for DePaul University; (d) served as a senior data science consultant at a nationwide Consumer Packaged Goods company; (e) wrote white papers for the CME Group; (f) co-created the Premia Bancor Index, which is calculated and distributed by S&P Dow Jones Indices; (g) served as the longstanding editor of an academic journal for the J.P. Morgan Center for Commodities in Denver; (h) has consulted for the World Bank; (i) is the co-editor of the bestselling Risk Book, Intelligent Commodity Investing; and (j) is an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at Bayes Business School - City, University of London (U.K.) and the managing co-editor of Bayes' Commodity Insights Digest.

Her previous professional roles have included serving as the Head of Portfolio Analysis at BNY Mellon Wealth Management | Risk and also as the Chief of Derivatives Strategies at Putnam Investments where she oversaw the execution of about $90 billion annually in derivatives. While at Putnam, she also co-managed a commodities fund whose clients included the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, a 401K plan, and a union pension plan.

Prior to Putnam, Till was a quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Company, specializing in hedge fund strategies and co-managing its first commodity fund. She also held systems and trading positions at two banks, both of which are now part of Bank of America. Till began her professional career in the Artificial Intelligence Group of what is now Accenture.

She has presented (or been a discussant) at the following institutions: the Bank of Canada, the (then) U.K. Financial Services Authority, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Oxford Mathematical Institute, the London School of Economics, International Energy Agency, KAPSARC (KSA), and at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. She has also presented to both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Comptroller for the Currency.

Till’s applied research papers have been published in the Journal of Alternative Investments, the Journal of Wealth Management, the Journal of Governance and Regulation, Corporate Finance Review, Quantitative Finance, Investment & Pensions Europe, Hedge Funds Review, and the Singapore Economic Review.

Her articles have been cited in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Derivatives, Journal of Structured Finance, and in the Harvard Law School’s Bankruptcy Roundtable as well as being cited in studies and reports at the Bank of Canada, the Bank of Japan, the Banque de France, the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Institute of International Finance, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and at KAPSARC (KSA) and by researchers at the Reserve Bank of Australia. Till’s published work has also been cited by the G20 Study Group on Commodities and by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) in its effort to pull “together facts, data and research from government, academia and think tanks about the causes of commodity price changes and volatility.” In addition, Till’s research has been cited in studies sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Parliament, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and by the German Federal Ministry of Finance.

Further, she has been quoted in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Grant's Interest Rate Observer, Institutional Investor, Risk magazine, and in Wired (U.K.) magazine on a diverse range of commodity and derivatives topics.

Till has a B.A. with General Honors in Statistics with Concentrations in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Chicago. In addition, she has an M.Sc. in Statistics from London School of Economics and Political Science where she studied under a private fellowship administered by the Fulbright Commission.