By: Ken Chase.
Citi’s focus on transforming its business processes and services saw the firm increase its technology spending by 14 percent in the second quarter of 2022, according to statements from CFO Mark Mason in the company’s most recent earnings call. That boost in tech spending was driven by the firm’s accelerating effort to move forward with increased automation and improvements in everything from governance to capital planning.
Mason noted, “The transformation is designed to improve our governance and processes, enhance our policies and leverage technology to strengthen our controls. We’ve been actively investing in technology to improve automation and hiring people to stand up these efforts.”
This transformational effort has been largely focused on helping the company consolidate its services and platforms, with an eye toward adoption of cloud-based solutions. The earnings call confirmed that the firm is working with a software provider to migrate its existing 16 ledger platforms to a single cloud-based platform. That process is expected to require multiple years to complete.
One recent survey suggested that technology spending is expected to grow significantly in 2022, with companies focusing increasingly on new automation software, cloud-based solutions, and artificial intelligence. Citi’s focus on improving its own technology is in line with those projections, as the company accelerates its plans to modernize that leverage new tech solutions for its clients.
It is also worth noting that Citi was the only major U.S. bank to beat analyst revenue expectations in the most recently reported quarterly results. While Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase failed to beat earnings expectations, Citi reported that its own revenue had increased from $11 billion to $19.6 billion in the quarter.
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