Originally Posted by
happychic
In the last Citi earnings call (2020 Q4), the incoming CEO Jane Fraser had said she intended to simplify and consolidate Consumer Wealth Management and Private Bank into one business line. I believe she's already named someone to head this effort.
I am really curious what they have in store and how this will pan out. I am no longer CG but I will always have a soft spot for Citi. If it's enticing enough, I may come back.
That is a potential serious problem.
The targets of the consumer banks like Citi, Chase and Wells Fargo are the existing bank customers. They want to offer the one-stop solutions and customers can manage their banking, credit cards and investments all with one single login. This will also help the banks to sell their own mutual funds or other investment products and enhance the revenue.
But Private Banking is a totally different business. Those are high net worth clients, not regular customers. Those people need personal touch, handshake. They would not want to go through 50 pages of DocuSign just to open a brokerage account. With just 700 branches in US and 2,500 branches globally, I do not know how many HNW clients Citi still holds. Maybe Citi does not have many now. So it wants to consolidate the two into one unit. I consider this to be a bad sign.