Dive Brief:

• Citi tapped Dipendra Malhotra, head of analytics, artificial intelligence and data at Morgan Stanley's wealth management unit, as head of wealth technology Monday. Malhotra will begin his new role in late May, CIO Jonathan Lofthouse said in an internal memo seen Wednesday by CIO Dive.
• Malhotra will report to Lofthouse and work closely with Eric Lordi, head of wealth platform and experience, and Joe Bonanno, head of data, analytics and innovation at the bank's wealth unit, the CIO said. Lofthouse became sole CIO at Citi in February, when the bank’s co-CIO Shadman Zafar retired, a company spokesperson confirmed.
• “Dipendra brings a breadth of experience, having worked across complex technology stacks and client-centric products in wealth management,” Lofthouse said in Wednesday’s memo, noting the executive “spearheaded the development and operations of critical wealth management data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, customer relationship management and marketing technology” at Morgan Stanley.

Dive Insight:

Citi’s wealth unit turned a corner financially last year as the bank continued to invest aggressively in modernization. 

The segment saw revenues grow 7% year over year under the leadership of wealth chief Andy Sieg, who came to Citi from Bank of America in 2023.

Technology has been a “limiting factor” in Citi's wealth business, Sieg said in February, speaking at Bank of America's Securities Financial Services Conference. The executive said he sees technology — particularly AI — as an opportunity for the company to leapfrog forward.

“The Citi-wide focus on topics like data and our overall technology architecture ... creates a tailwind for us, which is a good starting point,” Sieg said. “We've got partners like Palantir and Google and Snowflake around our cloud architecture that are putting us in position to make progress, we think, in months, which once in my career would have been years of progress to move the platforms forward.”

Sieg wasn’t speaking out of turn.

Citi has poured more than $30 billion into technology over the past three years to modernize infrastructure, streamline processes and automate controls after what CEO Jane Fraser characterized as decades of underinvestment.

The Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency slapped the bank with $135.6 million in penalties last year over data quality management deficiencies last year, a follow-on to 2020 consent orders that found the bank’s risk management and internal controls lacking.

Citi’s data and infrastructure upgrades have spurred broader digital initiatives.

“This transformation that Jane has been driving, in particular, has been focused on the quality of data inside Citi,” Sieg said. “For us in Wealth, this is very fortuitous because starting with data and getting the data environment improved in this business, we're setting the stage for us to be able to compete in a very different way … in terms of the experience that clients have as well as what it feels like for advisers and service personnel to work in this business.”

In January, the company armed 30,000 of its developers with generative AI coding tools after cementing a multiyear partnership with Google Cloud to migrate applications and leverage the Vertex AI platform.

Fraser also reinforced the bank’s technology leadership team last year, bringing in PwC veteran Tim Ryan to head technology and business enablement.

Sieg expressed confidence in Bonanno and Lordi, noting the two technologists had built AI platforms and driven digital experiences for other firms.

Like Malhotra, Bonanno and Lordi previously held leadership roles at Morgan Stanley. Bonanno led analytics strategy and data architecture at the investment bank for four years prior to joining Citi in 2022. Lordi, whom Citi onboarded in January, previously served as managing director for the investment bank’s wealth technology division.