RedSun

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.

happychic

If Citi does not have a good market share of high net worth clients, and people are leaving CG anyway, I say there is definitely room for opportunity to see how they can grow in those areas. Good on them for recognizing this and doing something about it. I guess we will see what comes out of it.

You can read through their last earnings report. They have several changes in mind, this is merely one of them. NY Times also did a profile on Jane Fraser and detailed a bit of the digital banking work she did when she was the head of Latin America under Citi. Some of the work that she had done there she intends to extend to US as well.

akr1970akr

not avail for new CG a/c holders. old ones can keep it.

i got free notary services from Citi for my CG status this week.

yay.

akr1970akr

CG customers can also get a discounted Prestige card (which may still be overpriced to be honest) and also - much lesser known - a discounted AA Exec level card. I think the latter has to be opened in branch with a paper app to get the discount on that. They hardly ever discuss that, and some branch staff don't even know about it (no flyers) but they can find it if they hunt in their systems.

That being said, paying for AA lounges right now is kind of a waste.

RedSun

Here is part of the article on today's WSJ on Citibank:

The Citigroup of today was created in 1998, a merger of the consumer-focused Citicorp and the highflying Wall Street bankers at Travelers Group. Executives envisioned a one-stop megabank where companies could manage their finances and globe-hopping travelers could always find a Citi ATM.

Citigroup, which used to be the world’s largest financial-services firm, is struggling to keep up with rivals. While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are hitting new highs in market value, Citigroup’s is half of what it was in 2006. Its profit and revenue, once roughly double that of other big banks, have now been lapped by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. And last fall, regulators ordered the overhaul of vast systems underpinning its sprawling operations, raising anew questions about the bank’s complexity.

The bank is a giant on Wall Street, in serving multinational corporations and in credit cards. It is second-tier in U.S. consumer banking.

Returns tend to improve with scale in consumer banking, and rivals Bank of America and JPMorgan have supercharged their retail operations with thousands of branches in cities across the country. Citigroup has fewer than 700 branches in just a handful of cities, instead betting on a future of heavily digital banking, including a coming partnership with Google.

Analysts and investors have argued Citigroup needs to restructure, with suggestions such as ditching all of its international consumer operations or buying a U.S. bank. But it is unclear if the immediate plans will be enough to appease critics. The regulatory consent order could bar any sizable acquisition for now.

So far, Citi is not going anywhere with its current focus on global institutional business. Now its new CEO wants to build up the high-net-worth business on a global scale. But that won't change much, in particularly to our US business. Citi just can't add 2,000 branches over the next couple of years. Even with HSBC's exiting US consumer banking, Citi can't even buy that business due to regulatory restrictions.

I do not see much change coming to US credit card and Citigold etc....

happychic

Thanks for quoting part of the article. The full article has more on Jane Fraser the incoming CEO, where Citibank is right now, and where their focus will be going forward. It's a worthwhile read for anyone following Citibank.

From what I understand, Citi recognizes their global footprint isn't working and it shows in their profitability. They are intending on selling a lot of their global assets pending on suitable buyers so they can focus on their US based business. They have no plans at the moment to open branches in US at a massive scale, which I personally think completely makes sense in 2021.

Rome wasn't built in a day. It took 20 years for Citi to get to where it is now after the merger with Travelers Bank. It may take them another 20 years to turn the ship around. I wouldn't expect any drastic changes to come to CitiGold shortly, if there's any coming at all. I hope I'm wrong because I would love to have a competitive contender in the retail bank market, but it would not be realistic to expect thoughtful changes coming shortly.

akr1970akr

Got free incoming wire and free notary services (3x) in the last week from CG status.

I get that free incoming wires isn't anything special though.

On the downside, spent 30+ min on hold trying to get a Citi rep for something else.

RedSun

That is absolutely the downside. I could have easily call my CPC relationship banker at local Chase branch. Same with BofA/ML.

garykung

The problem of Citi is going cheap and pissing off customers.

Just for the consumer market alone, a quick search will reveal that practically all Citi's consumer products have been experienced downgrade in the last 20 years. If Citi wants to go back to the top, fix this first.

UVU Wolverine

After my last experience on the phone with Citi, I’m thinking of closing all my accounts with them. I don’t have CG though.

Quick summary;

I had tried to set up another external account to transfer money from my Citi savings account to. Citi sent three trials deposits for me to verify, and I guess I chose the wrong two to input for verification. That external account was now blocked and it said I had to call to fix it.

I call in....and while the rep saw the issue, my entire savings account was frozen while on the phone with her. Well, 45 minutes later she unfreezes my account but the initial problem was never fixed. She insisted it was. I eventually just deleted the external account and re-added it later on successfully (by myself). Citi actually made the problem worse and the rep claimed she fixed the problem!

Bad showing for Citi, but that seems to be pretty standard.

MaxVO

One must be very patient with Citi. And they might periodically reward you with some weird feature that works to customer's advantage.

RedSun

The mix-up can be easily fixed by coming to local branch....

akr1970akr

just got off the phone with a CG rep. they took a filter for me for all online checks that were uncashed after two years and found close to $300 so far. all have been stop payment and recredited to my account. interesting little feature and i had no idea they could do that. this cannot be done via online chat.

this is for online checks - which are debited from your account upon issuance - versus paper checks written by hand which are debited when they are presented.

kentchristopher

Can anyone with a CitiGold self-directed brokerage account say whether the account includes the ability to make trades via webpage? I don't want to assume anything (e.g. HSBC self-directed trading doesn't have online access - you have to call) and given that I spent 20 minutes on hold today just trying to *open* an account (finally hung up), I'm wondering whether it's worth it to go to such lengths if accessing my funds and making trades is going to be an exercise in frustration.

MaxVO

Yes, but the site's functionality is limited. Exchange-traded stock transactions can be entered during trading hours. CG online commissions are $2.95, and some ridiculous number for broker-assisted. No after hours trading. Fixed income can't even be quoted after hours. Officially you can't even transfer cash between accounts after hours, but sometimes it works.
Mutual funds can only be selected from 1-2 poorly-performing families, must be initiated by a broker, but lt least for free. Subsequent trades can be self-directed.