Citi Group-Retail Business/Retail Banking:
Citibank deals with consumer banking and the retail business deals with credit cards, retail banking, wealth management, and home loan segments.
Citi Group was one of the oldest and largest banks in India.
Citibank and Citi Group is an American corporation and its headquarter is located in New York City. Citibank had entered India in 1902 and started the consumer banking business in 1985.
Citibank has 35 branches across India and around 20000 employees are working in the retail business with Citibank.
Citibank will take exit from the retail business in India as well as from 12 other countries across Asia as a part of global strategy.
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Besides India, the bank will exit consumer operations in China, Australia, Bahrain, Malaysia, Korea, Russia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand, and Taiwan.
Citibank Retail Business Expansion:
The bank did not give any timeline for the exit in the retail business. The decision will not immediately impact retail business and banking operations in India as well as it will not impact its Indian employees.
Citi Group is looking to expand its global retail business in Singapore, London, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates.
The bank said, “Citibank will allow investing mainly in wealth management where it has the great scale and potential and the focus will be on institutional banking.”
CEO of Citibank India said, “The decision of exit will not immediately impact our operations and retail business. We will continuously serve and take care of our clients with empathy and dedication as of now.”
“While the other 13 business sectors have fantastic Organizations, we don’t have the scale we need to contend,” Fraser said. “We accept our capital, speculation dollars, and different assets are better sent against higher returning open doors in abundance the executives and our institutional Organizations in Asia.”
Retail Business-Citibank Customer Base:
Citibank is in the retail business segment of commercial banking and served around 3 million retail customers with more than 1 million bank account holders.
Citibank is one of the largest distributors of credit cards in the retail business as of March 31, 2020, around 2 million credit card accounts were created.
Citibank reported its net profit of 4,912 crores as of March 2020 versus Rs 4,185 crores in the earlier year.
Citibank works in India as a part of the worldwide Goliath Citigroup and has an asset report size of Rs 2.18 lakh crore.
The other two major unfamiliar retail business banks in India are HSBC with an asset report size of Rs 2.11 lakh crore and Standard Chartered with Rs 1.84 lakh crore in 2019-20
Its India business incorporates retail banking, abundance the executives, credit cards, and home loans, speculation banking, and depository and exchange arrangements.
The New York-based bank has effectively been working out an abundance warning center in Singapore.
The 30,000-square-foot (2,800-square-meter) space is the biggest of its sort for the bank and has space for more than 300 relationship administrators and item-trained professionals.
The withdrawal came as Citi Group announced a record quarterly benefit, supported by the whirlwind of the limitless ticket to ride organizations it helped require the public in the initial three months of the year.
New Buyer For Consumer/Retail Business?
The exit in retail business would be fruitful if and when the bank can discover a purchaser, added the representative.
“No purchaser has been distinguished at this point,” said this individual, saying that Citibank will initially look for administrative endorsements – from the Reserve Bank of India-to begin the leave interaction through the offer of business.
As per reports, the bank is searching for a purchaser for its India buyer business and there will be no effect on existing clients, staff, or activities till the deal happens.
It will keep on zeroing in on discount business in India.
Citibank is not the only bank to exit in retail business or scale back in India. Various other banks including HSBC, Barclay, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, and Stanley have closed their operations in India because of higher expenses.