SNB Vice Chairman Martin Schlegel has been floated by Swiss media and experts as a favourite to replace Jordan, who said last month he would step down after 12 years at the helm.
"It is not international practice for the top central bank management to be promoted internally," said the SNB Observatory, a group of academics and a former central banker.
"The senior management of most central banks is appointed largely or even exclusively from outside of the central bank," it said.
Appointing an outsider would mean that the views of society were reflected in decision making, while also allowing the bank to draw on broader experience in finance and economics.
Currently, the SNB's rate-setting governing board has two longstanding officials promoted from within the bank - Jordan and Schlegel. The third member - Antoine Martin - previously worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The SNB's success in combating inflation did not mean it could ignore public concerns about the environmental impact of its investments or the lower representation of women in senior positions, the report said.
Its authors include Stefan Gerlach, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and current chief economist at Switzerland's EFG Bank.
The report's co-authors were Yvan Lengwiler of the University of Basel and president of the Swiss government's group of experts on banking stability, and Charles Wyplosz from the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
They said SNB's chairman did not run the central bank, with its three governing board members all having equal status and setting monetary policy collectively, while the chairman must not have a central role in choosing their successor.
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
