The American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation, Citigroup has announced its intentions to exit the consumer banking operations in 13 countries including India.
The 13 nations Citibank (the largest foreign bank in India) will pull out from are Australia, Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The Citigroup will not sell its wealth management and institutional business which earns the bank major fee income. It will sell off the retail accounts and credit cards, and indicated that there won’t be any layoffs or closure of offices in India.
The bank maintains that the credit cards business will function normally, with zero impact on customers. with a sale, the customer can make a choice whether to continue with the new owner or close the account.
The Citigroup global Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser, said:
“While the other 13 markets have excellent businesses, we don’t have the scale we need to compete,”
“We believe our capital, investment dollars and other resources are better deployed against higher returning opportunities in wealth management and our institutional businesses in Asia,”
“We will continue to update you on strategic decisions as we make them while we work to increase the returns we deliver to our shareholders.”
“As a result of the ongoing refresh of our strategy, we have decided that we are going to double down on wealth,”
“We will operate our consumer banking franchise in Asia and EMEA solely from four wealth centres — Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and London,”
“This positions us to capture the strong growth and attractive returns the wealth management business offers through these important hubs.”
Citigroup will continue to serve clients in the markets where it is ending consumer operations.
Citi reported net income of $7.9bn (£5.7bn) for the first three months of 2021, beating analysts’ expectations.
While the banking group may be exiting key markets in Asia, rivals are expanding in the region.
