This new name clearly distinguishes Citi amongst our competitive set. Our model is distinct: personalized financial guidance supported by leading digital capabilities and complemented by well-placed physical locations in leading urban markets within the U.S., and across our other three regions. And as consumer expectations continue to evolve rapidly, our unique model is well-positioned to evolve with them – providing our customers with seamless service and delivering advanced digital experiences for today and tomorrow.
Citi is a leader in payments, with 128 million accounts and $503 billion in annual purchase sales, and has unrivaled partnerships with premier brands across Citi Branded Cards and Citi Retail Services.
Branded Cards
Citi Branded Cards provides payment, credit and unsecured lending solutions to consumers and small businesses, with 35 million accounts in North America. With a wide range of proprietary cards – such as Citi Double Cash, Citi Simplicity and Citi Premier – as well as co-brand cards with leading brands including American Airlines, AT&T and Costco, and innovative lending solutions such as Citi Flex Pay and Flex Loan, the business provides a full spectrum of client-centric payment and lending products and features.
Last year, we continued to launch new and innovative card products, evolve our value propositions and reward offerings, extend co-brand partnerships, and provide new digital capabilities to make purchases faster, convenient and more rewarding.
Notably, we introduced a new credit card that infuses ease, flexibility and automation into the cash back category. The Citi Custom Cash Card is a different kind of cash back card that automatically adapts to card members’ ever-changing needs. Rewarding cardmembers with 5% cash back on their top eligible spend category – ranging from restaurants to grocery to select streaming and travel plus more – each billing cycle up to the first $500 spent, and 1% cash back on all other purchases, the card is a game changer.
The Citi Custom Cash Card is also our landmark mobile-first card designed for a digitally savvy customer. From sign-up to ThankYou points redemption, we ensure a seamless experience that’s easy-to-use and transparent. After approval, card members can immediately access the full suite of digital features by adding their card to their digital wallet, tracking the shipment of their physical card, and customizing their account set-up through personalized alerts. Once the card is set up, customers can easily understand how they are earning rewards through a real-time tracker displaying their top spend category and decide the best way to redeem their rewards.
And as consumer behavior continues to evolve, and we continue to evolve our value propositions and reward offerings accordingly. For example, we significantly expanded our ThankYou Rewards portfolio to include two new exciting points transfer options: Choice Privileges and Wyndham Rewards. Now, ThankYou cardmembers can choose from more than 50,000 hotel properties and vacation rentals around the globe as well as new charitable redemption options – including Susan G Komen and CODE (RED) – and the addition of 12 new gift card merchants to the now nearly 140 merchants within the ThankYou Gift Card catalog.
We are also proud to have announced an extension of one of our marquee partnerships: AT&T. The multi-year renewal of our consumer co-brand credit card portfolio enables us to continue to provide innovative credit card products, such as the AT&T Access Card, to drive enhanced customer engagement and loyalty and explore additional consumer offerings to this highly digitally engaged consumer base. With physical cards rapidly digitizing and customers being increasingly online, we continued to expand digital lending capabilities and point-of-sale solutions to give customers ease, convenience and choice in payments. In 2021, Citi launched Personal Installment Loans for select Citi Branded cardmembers who can apply for and service their loans completely through digital channels. This end-to-end digital capability provides a simpler and more transparent experience that empowers our customers to bank better.
In addition to Personal Installment Loans, Citi continues to offer other installment loan products such as our Flex Loan and Flex Pay products that have seen double-digit growth year over year. And Citi has expanded these offerings at point of sale with key partners such as Amazon. By enhancing our digital capabilities, we are committed to offering more flexibility and meeting our customers’ banking needs whenever or wherever they are.
Retail Services
Citi Retail Services is one of North America’s largest and most experienced retail credit solution providers of private label and co-brand credit cards for retailers. The business serves 74 million customer accounts for iconic brands, including Best Buy, Exxon, Mobil, L.L.Bean, Macy’s, Sears, Shell, The Home Depot, Tractor Supply Company and Wayfair.
In 2021, we announced the extension of a number of our relationships, including Tractor Supply Company and Macy’s, for years to come.
With our high-tech, high-touch relationship model, Citibank serves as a trusted advisor to our retail, mortgage, small business and wealth management clients at every stage of their financial journey. Through Citi’s Access Account, Basic Banking, Citi Priority, Citigold® and Citigold Private Client, we offer an array of products, services and digital capabilities to clients across the full spectrum of consumer banking needs worldwide.
In the U.S., Citi continued to digitize our retail bank model to drive national scale. Citi Accelerate Savings digital high-yield savings for customers outside Citi’s branch footprint, contributed to robust digital deposit sales, while Citi’s Access Account, a checkless bank account with no or low monthly fees, no overdraft fees and access to Citi’s digital, retail and ATM channels, continued to be one of our fastest-growing products.
Throughout the pandemic, we have worked tirelessly to ensure that customers and small businesses felt confident that as an essential service, we were available to help them navigate this challenging time. By providing customers with quick links to set up online access, shortcuts to key digital tools and how-to videos on key features, we continue to issue a steady stream of communications reinforcing the quick, easy nature of digital banking. These communications were incredibly well received by our customers, and we saw significant digital adoption and engagement among clients. Since the onset of COVID-19, the percentage of Retail Bank accounts opened digitally has risen to nearly 60% globally as has the use of mobile check deposits in the U.S. In Wealth Management, we continued to enhance our capabilities and invest in our offerings and digital tools to meet a wider spectrum of customer needs.
And we continued to launch innovative new offering such as Citi Self Invest, a self-directed offering that provides clients the ability to make no-cost investments in securities including equities and ETFs with no-fee trades and no account minimums. We also collaborated with BNY Mellon to enable Verizon to become the first company to send request-for-payment messages to customers who bank with Citi. The functionality, which we plan to expand to other companies, gives Citi clients greater control to pay the bills they want to pay precisely when they want to pay them.
Last, but certainly not least, we opened the doors to our new global headquarters branch featuring a state-of-the-art Client Center in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood, offering a view into the future of retail banking. The unique 7,000-square-foot concept space easily transforms in configuration and shape to help customers craft experiences ranging from the most public to the most private, from the most simplistic of activities to complex investment planning. We couldn’t be more proud to bring the best of Citi as a global bank to serve the city in which we were born back in 1812.
Established in January 2021, Global Wealth Management is unified wealth platform that serves clients across the wealth continuum. GWM serves ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices through Citi Private Bank, operates in the affluent and high-net worth segments through Citigold® and Citigold Private Client and captures wealth management in the workplace through Global Wealth at Work. We also have leading investment solutions platform, which allows us deliver traditional and alternative investments, managed account solutions, best-in-class research and advice for all Citi clients.
As a unified business, our mission is to deliver a total wealth solution to our clients, with integrated advice and execution across both their assets and liabilities. We deliver comprehensive solutions that range from core personal banking and lending, to leading institutional capabilities for our wealthiest clients.
Citi Private Bank
The Private Bank is dedicated to helping the world’s wealthiest individuals, families and law firms protect and responsibly grow their wealth.
We have a top 5 global Private Bank. From 52 locations across 18 countries, we serve more than 10,000 ultra-high net worth clients hailing from over 100 countries, including 25% of the world’s billionaires and more than 1,400 family offices.
Our unique business model enables us to focus on fewer, larger and more sophisticated clients with an average net worth above $100 million. Clients enjoy a highly customized experience, with access to a comprehensive range of products and services spanning investments, banking, lending, custody, wealth planning, real estate, art, aircraft finance and lending, and more. We serve the wealth needs of the entirety of our client families, from family office advisory to advising the next generation of wealth, and our bespoke client events showcase the power of our reach.
In everything we do, we emphasize personalized advice, competitive pricing and efficient execution. Citi Private Bank’s close partnership with Citi’s Institutional Clients Group means we can connect clients’ businesses to banking, capital markets and advisory services, as well as to Citi’s other institutional resources.
In 2021, our sixth annual Family Office Leadership Program brought together a host of world-renowned experts, business leaders, family office practitioners and nearly 3000 participants from 80+ countries to share their insights and experiences. Topics included the challenge to make breakthrough investments for a net zero carbon world, the future of finance, and investing in disruptive innovation, among many others. It is our intention, COVID conditions permitting, to revert to our in-person format with a follow up virtual event for our seventh edition in early June 2022.
Citigold® and Citigold Private Client
The Consumer Wealth Management businesses deliver a full spectrum of investment experiences from award-winning banking services to industry-leading advice.
Through Citigold® and Citigold Private Client, we are able to serve affluent and high-net worth clients across the globe. This business is focused on the U.S., the largest market, and Asia, the fastest-growing market where we are a top three wealth manager.
Tailored for clients with more than $200,000 in investible assets, Citigold helps clients enjoy today and plan for tomorrow’s most important financial goals. Citigold clients have a dedicated team, complimentary financial planning, world-class investing capabilities, preferred pricing on select products and exclusive travel and lifestyle benefits. Citigold Private Client, the highest tier of banking at Citibank, is for clients with more than $1 million and offers an elevated financial relationship with a higher level of service and wealth management. Citigold Private Clients have access to a dedicated Wealth team, advanced wealth planning strategies, trust services, primer investment products and insights and numerous lifestyle benefits.
Citi launched Citi Self Invest, a self-directed digital offering, in 2021. Seamless and dynamic, the platform gives clients the power to invest in equities, mutual funds and ETFs, as well as access to resources to learn more about personal finance.
Global Wealth at Work
Global Wealth at Work was created in 2021 to allow Citi to expand its highly successful Law Firm Group model into new industries.
The Law Firm Group celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021. We serve professionals from the beginning of their careers to the C-suite, providing the full breadth of Citi’s services – from banking to cards to investments. We build a strong relationship with clients, positioning us to capture their growing wallet as they continue to move up the wealth continuum. At the corporate level, we help streamline operations and enable practice growth and progress.
We are now expanding and scaling this very successful model to key, targeted industries like professional services, asset management, private equity and venture capital firms.
Today, we serve more than 1000 offices and 50,000 individuals.
Global Wealth Management Investments
Global Wealth Management Investments (GWMI) is Citi’s leading investment solutions team and platform. GWMI provides holistic investments advice offering clients critical insights into global market developments and ideas. We provide access to local and global markets through a dedicated capital markets platform. We operate Citi Investment Management, a proprietary provider of asset management services only available to Citi clients. GWMI has a wide range of alternative and traditional investment options from independent providers designed to provide unique strategies and benefits for client portfolios. And all of this is central to the implementation of the global advice and research we provide to every client segment GWMI serves.
We offer to clients across the wealth spectrum a range of investment solutions from equities, fixed income, ETF’s, mutual funds through to portfolio management solutions. GWMI also help clients embed their environmental, social and governance objectives through our Sustainable Investing team, which works across Citi’s investment divisions to develop and embed a global sustainability framework for all client segments across the Private and the Consumer Bank globally. The team partners with Capital Markets, Citi Investment Management, Alternatives Investments and Citi Direct Private Investments to deliver “Investing with Purpose,” our comprehensive sustainable investments platform, to our clients.
The GWMI platform has received industry recognition for the quality of its results, advice and innovation.
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