Financial Modelers' Manifesto
The Financial Modelers’ Manifesto is a call for more responsibility in risk management and quantitative finance. It was written by Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott and includes a Modelers’ Hippocratic Oath. The oath urges modelers to put people’s safety and financial stability first, to be honest about what their models can and cannot do, and to disclose all assumptions, limitations, and risks.
The manifesto’s structure mirrors The Communist Manifesto, using strong, reform-minded language to push for changes in the field.
It was written in response to the 2008 financial crisis, which followed the collapse of subprime mortgages. The goal is to improve how models are used and understood to prevent similar problems in the future.
A shorter version appeared in Business Week in December 2008, with the full version published soon afterward.
Both authors had long warned about the risks of financial models before the crisis: Derman in 1996 and Wilmott in 2000.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:17 (CET).