Career in academia
After receiving her diploma in 1998, Schnabel started her doctorate studies in the graduate program "Allocation on financial markets" at the Department of Economics, University of Mannheim until 2003. That same year, she also wrote a dissertation, Macroeconomic Risks and Financial Crises – A Historical Perspective, under the supervision of Martin Hellwig. Following that, she then worked as a student research assistant to Axel Börsch-Supan while she completed internships at Deutsche Bank in Saint Petersburg and Frankfurt. For the next three years, she was a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn.
In 2007 Schnabel became a professor of financial economics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In 2014 she was appointed as member of the German Council of Economic Experts (Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung) and started teaching financial economics at the University of Bonn in 2015.
In early 2019, she strongly advised against a possible merger of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.
Member of the executive board of the ECB, 2019–present
Following a proposal of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, the German government nominated Schnabel to the European Central Bank’s executive board in October 2019, replacing Sabine Lautenschläger. Shortly after, the Eurogroup supported Schnabel's candidacy for a non-renewable 8-year term.
On the executive board, Schnabel is responsible for market operations. In this capacity, she oversees the ECB's 5.6 trillion-euro ($6.8 trillion) quantitative easing program.
On 24 September 2026, the ECB announced Schnabel's resignation, effective on 3rd January 2027. Schnabel leaves the ECB in order to join the IMF and succeed Tobias Adrian as Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF..
