My name is Ken Husen. I'm the large-cap bank analyst here at Autonomous. I'm really pleased to have Jane Fraser with us, the CEO of Citigroup.
Hello, everyone.
Jane has spent the last several years navigating the bank through a multi-year transformation and simplification of the company since becoming the CEO in 2021. Really excited to have you here, Jane, and
Thank you
have a great discussion.
Great. Thank you very much indeed.
Excellent. For Citi, can't help starting with a global question, given all the news and noise and things that we've all been listening and learning about. Given Citi's broad global reach, I'd love to hear just your assessment about the global economic situation and outlook, and what are the most important swing factors we need to be thinking about.
Yeah. I just spent a couple of weeks over in Europe and the Middle East, and there is nothing like being in Europe to make you feel a bit better about the U.S. from some of the outlook. I am feeling more positive about the economy than the weather outside, that is for sure. Maybe just start off with what some of the things we are seeing. It is certainly slowing global growth just because of some of the pause from the tariffs and the uncertainty that is out there. It is quite a different picture in different parts of the world. There are some real bright spots in different places in the Middle East and Asia. India just feels like it is going to be riding like a 10-year positive wave. I look at our own bank.
We sold our consumer franchise in India about 18 months ago, and it was a third of the franchise. We are now bigger in India than we were when we owned the consumer franchise. There has been a lot of growth, a lot of positive momentum there that our team, I'm glad to say, took full advantage of. India is a bright spot. Japan, more challenged with the tariffs, particularly on the auto front, and they are worried about the aluminum and steel. Otherwise, Japan as well, in a pretty good position from the companies now, much more of a return focus like Citi, and that they are looking abroad for global growth and dynamic there.
The Middle East, it's just an exciting place because they're on a lot of the mega trends of investing, a lot of heavy investing in the States and then domestically, and taking advantage of the energy and all of the data center, AI, advanced manufacturing kind of playing to their favor. They can benefit from investment in it as well as investing in those areas. Over in Europe, you saw a bit more of a spring in the step in Germany than I've seen in a while. Not so much for this year, but I think they see that they've got a path to some more growth after seven years of not really growing much. I saw a bit more confidence from some of the corporate sector there.
That said, quite a lot of structural challenges to be addressed, but I think they're encouraged with the government. The rest of Europe, I think, is going to be hit quite hard by the tariff impact and some of the fragility of the economy. It is really, will they seize this moment to drive some of the structural change, get more labor mobility, get the capital market union put in place, things like that. Most of the CEOs you speak to there, they are dubious, I think would be the best way of describing it. They can see that this should be the moment, but they're just a bit skeptical that Brussels will get there. With all of that, you come back to the States, and it's, as you've been hearing over the last couple of days, the consumer's really holding up. The spending's good.
There's some benefit of the gas prices being lower. Essentials doing better on the spend, things like that. The main thing we're seeing is this pause that's been going on. It's not brought everything to a grinding halt, but we've certainly seen some decisions that have been held up, and we'll start seeing that impact coming through. We'll see some of the supply chain disruptions starting to come through. I think our bank's not going to see so much of it because I think it's those who've got the SME exposures and the small and mid-market ones. Again, that's where I think the pain's going to hit first for us. I don't want to sound complacent in the least, but because we're such a blue chip focus, they've got much more flexibility, diversified business models to play with.
When you bring that back down to Citi sitting in the middle of a lot of that, what do you see as far as the client franchise, the changes that clients are making, and where Citi's participating in that?
Yeah. I mean, Mark and I were chatting, you think you all know Mark Mason, about the fact that we keep talking about the last three years, when's there going to be a recession? It just, it kept never coming. What we're seeing is still the consumer in the States in good health. When we look at the mindset, we're seeing, as I say, essentials getting a bit more of a pop, but we're still seeing good spend on the retail and discretionary side, pretty healthy. For a little while, it was the buy stuff forward, but as soon as you saw the pause, it reverted back to more, it wasn't the great pull forward. Although I did go out and buy some sneakers for my son, some extra ones, just in case, Scottish.
The delinquency behavior is the one I'm really happy about, is that we're seeing quite a fiscally responsible consumer at the moment. Delinquencies are certainly stabilized, but they're improving in many different areas. That gives us, that gives me some optimism. What we keep an eye on therefore is going to be unemployment. We've all seen the numbers, they hold up. We'll see how that plays out over the next few quarters and what that means. So far, so good, but it's a lot of uncertainty out. From the corporates, again, I've just been pleasantly surprised by how much activity is still going on, particularly in the M&A and the other arenas, or we'll talk a bit more about that later. We have three different levels of engagement with the corporate. The first is around supply chains.
I think, as you all know, we're in about 100 countries, we operate in 180. We reach the countries others don't get to. For the corporate sectors, they're all looking at, how do I need to rethink about my supply chain again? They're getting quite good at rethinking about supply chains because after COVID and others, they had to rethink them. They're getting ready. Until we've got clarity on the tariffs and the structure, no one's going to be actually pulling that much. They'll make some moves, no regrets, but the big shift doesn't happen. The second level we talk to them about is then obviously the hedging and their financing and how they're looking at things. Again, with the hedging, we've got to see what happens with rates, what happens with dollar and different currencies and some of the movements we've been seeing.
We've been pretty busy on that front, as you would imagine. With some of the financing, let's take advantage of windows when the markets are very fully open. That's been pretty active. The one, as I say, that it's the strategic dialogue. Some of that's AI driven, some of that's the big capital investments we've been talking about. We've seen a lot of M&A. We had a $40 billion M&A the other day. The thing that we're waiting for is, I was in Washington yesterday and getting the assurances that we should be starting to see more clarity on the FTC and where the president wants to go with M&A. I think once we get some more clarity on that, that will also potentially help the big unlock we have been waiting for with sponsors selling even more into corporates.
It's been quieter than it would have been, but it's still pretty active and the pipeline's great. Yeah. I don't want to sound overly optimistic. I think we're in this wait and see from a lot of the corporates. But it's pretty, I mean, it's busy. And it's busy back in 388 Greenwich, and it's busy all around the world with the companies. They will act once there's more clarity.
Yeah. Speaking of another place where we're awaiting more clarity, the regulatory environment, obviously the tone has gotten much better, but we're waiting for a plethora of potential rules and outcomes. I guess from your perspective, how are you looking at what we're expecting and what the best balance is between proper bank regulation and good bank flexibility?
I think Secretary Bessent has been extremely consistent and very clear in what he's saying. He said he feels his words that banks have been straightjacketed. He looks at many different companies and feels that similarly there will be a benefit of release from some deregulation. He certainly has no intention of harming safety and soundness and wants the focus to be on material financial risks and probably a lessening of focus around some of the governance and other areas. That is one aspect that I think we can expect him to be quite engaged with and the team, both the Fed and OCC and the other regulators we have been looking at. There seems to be good alignment, but it is early days. The check is not in the post yet, let alone in the bank account. We have to see how it translates.
We've got some early signs with SLR. Secretary Bessent wants to have banks participate in the Treasury market in times of stress. We welcome some of those changes and other pieces. Just generally for our clients, I think we're looking forward to seeing the permitting reform go through, which will help facilitate infrastructure investing in the private credit arena and our own financing business. We're also looking forward to getting clarity on the capital rules. There's strong alignment amongst the views of the different bank CEOs. We'd like to have clarity. We think it's good for our investors. We want to have clarity around the entire capital stack, and we'd like to see that being analytically based. Holistic, analytically based without tremendous volatility and the transparency that ensures that models are fit for purpose.
Yep. And so, when we start to think about how this all starts to apply to Citi, as I mentioned in the intro, you've been moving forward this multi-year transformation. In terms of the top things that are left to do, and it's an ongoing project, but obviously there's the regulatory side of it, and then there's also just the business side and technology and the investments you're making in the franchise. Can you kind of cascade us through where you are and where we're going in that front?
Yeah. If you think about the journey we've been on, the first piece was setting up what is Citi and the vision that we had around is really largely revolving around being the banking partner for clients with cross-border needs, then setting the five businesses and getting those set up. That was quite a bit of work. Banking, for example, you have the investment bank, corporate bank, commercial bank, all under one umbrella and one structure, bringing wealth, which had been fragmented in multiple different parts of business into one structure. Getting the strategies clear and then getting them on the path to delivering the returns that you would expect each of those businesses to be delivering and getting them set up once and for all the right way.
That work was all ongoing at the same time as we were divesting of all the consumer franchises. Got another one agreed this week. There had been a holdout south in Poland where we were given the war in Ukraine and the like. We really got to move on with that. Part of that move on was once you got out of these local businesses, you are then able to run the bank very differently because you are able to run it off global platforms rather than being universal banking, multiple countries everywhere with a very different management structure, highly decentralized, a lot of fragmentation. Getting out of those businesses then enabled us to do the org work that we did. We lined up the structure with the strategy. We took out a lot of activity that we did not need to do anymore.
Now the focus that we have is how do we then get the processes to line up with a simpler business construct, much more a global business that all revolves around clients with cross-border needs rather than multiple different client segments that all have different needs, local to global, et cetera. That one, I wish you could wave a wand, and that was done overnight. It is a heavy lift and hard work. This is where you've heard us talk a lot about how the consent order work and this work kind of very much merges, which is great for our shareholders because we're starting to see some of the efficiency of benefits coming through from the investments we've made. We've still got work that we're doing in driving through that process efficiency.
That is really the work the next few years so that we are a boring thing of incredible simplicity and beauty that you all understand perfectly will be at our long-term target returns. You will be asking me what is next. That is sort of where we are focusing on now, the longer term. We know we do not let up in the discipline for what we commit for 2025, what we deliver for 2026 on the medium term. As a management team, we are now focusing beyond. That is what you will hear us talking a lot more about, particularly next year, obviously as well.
Excellent. When we start to dig into the five businesses a little bit, kind of connected to the global point, services is fully integrated into everything. It's something that you.
That is the thing of beauty already, just to be clear.
Yes. Within that, the ROE has continued to be way above industry norms, 26%, the best business in terms of the return priority. What is the differentiation today and especially how is that standing out in the environment you have in terms of what you guys are providing and how that is creating that activity for Citi?
Yeah. I mean, if you look at the business, it is a through-the-cycle business. We expect it to be delivering mid-20% returns through the cycle. It has a lot of growth potential because a lot of the work, it's just we are deeply embedded inside companies. We are helping do their payroll, their liquidity management, their receivables, their collectibles. We are looking at all of the supply chain dynamics. It is like five root canals to get us out of any one country. It is very sticky deposit business. It has got strong fee profile to it as well. We follow the clients around the world. When things change, let's look at what happened with Russia and the war happened with Ukraine. You saw us growing tremendously because you saw companies building up activities locally. This is quite a local business.
It is how do you help a company on the ground operate their working capital every day and open their door every day. You have the cross-border nature of it and where the flows go and move. This is sort of deeply rooted into local economies everywhere around the world with an extraordinary installed base, but also an area with a lot of innovation. What can you expect from us going forward? It is to continue to innovate. We can talk about the power of this network. I think hopefully our investors are beginning to understand that this network, when things happen in the world, we make more money. We grow more. You have just seen that consistently. I think the proof has been in multiple years of the putting on this one. We have grown that business from $12 billion to $20 billion.
It will continue growing robustly from product innovation. One I'm excited about at the moment as well is just in the digital asset space. The question often comes up from investors, help us understand digital asset. If you're a, let's take Procter & Gamble. You've got an account with us in the U.S. and you've got an account with us in, let's say, Germany. What we do is we take, and you want to move money from U.S. to Germany. This goes on our blockchain, real-time instant payment, and it leaves New York and it arrives back in Germany. It goes from cash on our blockchain and then back up to cash again. The client loves it because it's cash to cash for them. They're not worried about compliance. They're not worried about, oh, this is digital assets. What do we need to do about it?
It is just a use case as to why the banks are always pushing the regulators to say, let us have access space because we can be the best use cases for digital assets out there at scale. It is a great example of how these different assets are adding to the toolkit for us.
Yeah. You mentioned earlier about how there's a bit of a pause on some of the corporate activity, but the offset to that has been the strength in the markets business, right? We've seen improving returns in the markets business to the 14% zone. How does that business act in this environment? Talk about the fee pool being bigger than it used to be. You guys have spent time regaining share over the course of time. In that environment, does that continue to be a good hedge to some of the slowdown?
Yeah, very much so. We've seen that consistently over the last few years where when there's been periods of this volatility, we have been at the street, but we've been making a lot of money from that and good returning, high returning money from it, which is what we're particularly focused on. Andy Morton is as well running that business. If you look at the moment, as we talked about, where are some of the challenges for FX interest rate hedging during the issues the last couple of years? It was a lot of commodity and rates and FX hedging. Here, we've got a shift in the rate environment. Again, we've got a shift in some of the FX dynamics. You've got companies probably moving some of their expense and their revenue profile around, and that again needs to be adjusted for.
That's one element where we're very active right now with our corporate clients and some of the investors everywhere in the world. You have other areas like equities where sometimes when rates are busier, equities might be quieter or the other way around. We're very focused on both bringing in this, getting more scale into a lot of the work we're doing in the prime business. Quite pleased with where that's going, but I'd like to see that growing faster. Mark and I are looking at how do we support some more investment in that area because we just feel that's got a very good return profile to it. It's a good complement to the strengths that we have in equity derivatives in particular that has just been a, we're a top two, three player in that space consistently.
That's a business that I'm pleased with how it's going, but we are being selective about where in that space you play because there are some low returning parts of equities. We avoid those ones. On the spread side, and this is an area Mickey Batory leads for us. Again, we are all seeing the opportunity in financing here, being the private credit, some of the real estate areas. I mean, there's a number of different ones. We have been doing very nicely there. We're one of the top franchises in that. You've also seen us be very disciplined in some of the areas within that that we felt were low returning, like Munis and others. The strategy there has really been paying off for us. We're benefiting from the higher activity. We're also benefiting from a unique franchise.
There's a lot of synergies between services and our markets business with Viswas coming in and building up our episodic business. Andy Morton is constantly pushing him to get more and more share. He was teasing him the other day saying, you've been here a year. Why aren't you a top two player yet? He's looking at getting more and more of the activity for markets off stronger episodic business. We've been doing a lot more of the big, more chunky alpha trades, which are good for what used to be more of a flow shop. Wealth is another area where there are a lot of synergies with markets and benefit from. All these different pieces come together and help drive our growth as well and markets benefits.
Great. On this point, he has now been in the seat for close to, I believe, a year now, focused also on just picking up those incremental share points. In this environment where we are in a bit of this pause, how do you identify?
In terms of our market share gains.
That's exact. So, how do you focus on across the main product areas on seeing that market share while things might be a little bit quiet? How's the strategy evolved?
Look, I think the good news for investors is you're seeing proof points on the strategy. If you look at the structure, we have our investment bank, corporate bank, commercial bank, all in a single structure. Just saying, we're the first bank to do that and everyone else is copying us, just saying. What we're seeing from it is our investment banking side is really seeing the benefit from the relationships we have with the corporates around the world. Our clients trust Citi. They do not open the door in many countries without us. Many of the different areas that we're engaged with them have become much more strategic. I mean, supply chain is a C-suite issue at the moment.
That relationship over decades with many of these corporates and being seen as reliable and trusted has really given, with the right talent that we've been investing in in the last few years into the investment bank and that Viz has been stepping up once more on, is giving, we're seeing that translate. The piece I'm happy with, last year, we got about 50 basis points of share gain in investment banking. A lot of that was from the investment grade DCM strength that we have, given the nature of the client base we serve. This year, 80 basis points of share gain in the first quarter. You saw we had very strong results in banking and year-over-year growth. We almost doubled the revenue, but it came from Levfin, M&A.
That's kind of a bit of the Holy Grail because when you have those relationships, we need the largest LBO. We've been doing the largest M&A deal. Some of them we were the sole advisor on. One quarter in that, there'll be some ups and downs, I'm sure, around it, but we can really see the momentum there. Where does the opportunity sit for us? We're really strong with the corporate franchise. We have not been as strong and invested as highly in the sponsor space. Now what we're doing is we've been in the wrong end of the top 10 in the sponsor league table. If we can get to top five with our sponsor clients, that gets us to top three in investment banking. It's one where the sponsors have kind of been a bit too dependent on just two players.
They want a third player. This is where the Apollo capability has also been very valuable on the private credit and other space as well. They want to do more business with Citi. They also love the wealth strategy because they'll be partners for us in being on the platform there. It's a big opportunity. Viz basically has no excuse. He's doing a good job, but he's doing it the right way. He's putting good disciplines into the banking force, looking at the calling, looking at the clients we're serving. Where is it that we've got the good C-suite, making sure there's a single client executive who's the entry point for the whole Citi relationship, and that person is doing their job well. They are the right person. It's working with the clients.
I think you would just see us pretty systematically build out to the potential that we probably should have been for a few years now. You can see the proof points strategy is working. We'll take advantage with continued investment in the right talent. I do not want gunslinger talent. I want, and we're very aligned around this, talent who want to build a franchise. That's the group that we're bringing in and marrying with our own team.
Yeah. You mentioned before wealth management's connection to the other markets. Andy has been in that world now for a few years, and the ROE has improved to 9% plus. That's becoming a bigger, more stable part of the revenue stream. Talk about the incremental opportunity.
We talked about the 24% growth last quarter in the revenues. Yes. It's really coming together for, I think, our investors to see why wealth makes so much sense for our franchise. We have $5 trillion off us from our existing client base. We are not being shy now that we've got the investment platform in good shape. We've got our deposit and our lending platforms in good shape now. Andy's got a stellar team. I mean, it's an exciting team who are coming together because they can see this opportunity to be the leading global wealth manager. That's why they came to Citi. They came from great different jobs and roles and terrific other firms. They're just so excited to build to the potential here. The linkages in with the other businesses are mid-market clients around.
I mean, this is when you go internationally, we are not the wealth manager for retired doctors and dentists when you go abroad. These are the people that are shaping the global economy, building new businesses into the mid-market, in the global supply chains. They look at Citi and look at Citi in India. It's 124 years there. They view us as local but global, that we understand these different dimensions. It's just a very different feel. It is the right team, and we're delivering the proof points in the investment assets. Net new investment assets is the North Star of the business and the team. At the same time, very good efficiency and good discipline.
Andy's been focused making sure we get the 25%-30% operating margins and that we get to first to the mid-teens and that we get to the sort of 20% ROTC in that business. All of the franchises are now beginning to perform. The private bank has sort of been the laggard, but we saw good growth in that last quarter. Andy kind of grasped that one by the reins, and he's driving it forward in a good way. As you can tell, quite excited about this one. It's just, I think for you all, you can see the different proof points getting delivered, and you'll just continue to see the consistency of that.
Wrapping up on the businesses, to come back to you as personal banking. You mentioned in your intro about things we're watching for the U.S. consumer, and you said still hanging in there and doing pretty well. One of the questions that comes up a lot for Citi is that card portfolio that we know is rather big in terms of the loan book. Talk us through just that confidence that you see in terms of the U.S. consumer and in terms of the metrics that you're looking at inside the different card books.
First of all, we have a terrific leader of that business, Gonzalo Lecetti. He's got a strong team, and they've delivered three years of revenue growth. We've had 11 quarters now of positive operating leverage. We saw the returns into the teenager category last quarter. It's just been run in a very strong and disciplined manner. A lot of investment into innovation. The digital proposition there is very strong. This is not the Citi consumer franchise of old. If you think back to what it used to be, what it is today, it's 85%-86% prime from the portfolio basis. It's very well reserved. It's an 8.2% reserve, which is plenty. I like the discipline that we've seen that whole team have as different partner portfolios come up for renewal. They'll turn them down. They're pushing and driving for much higher return profiles from them.
I feel very good about the growth prospects from new client acquisition. I feel very good about the partnerships we've got. We've been refreshing a number of the cards, the Strata cards, the one that we've been doing, been winning a lot of awards, and you see the client satisfaction rising. The other piece that's coming in there is AI. We've started doing quite a bit of work in the AI space. I see more room for that efficiency that really has markedly improved, as you'd expect with that amount of positive operating leverage for so long. We still see some good runway there whilst continuing to invest in marketing and in the product innovations and other pieces we need.
Yeah, let's keep our eye on the unemployment numbers, and we're certainly doing our best to make sure that we can deliver the returns that you would expect from that business and the support from the retail bank as well. Plays an important feeder role.
Thank you for walking through the core businesses. And one that still has some change ahead of it is the potential future IPO of the Mexico franchise.
Really? No idea.
That's new, right? You've spoken very consistently about getting that ready. Can you give us an update in terms of?
I'm afraid I'm going to be horribly boring on this one. The huge work was to separate out into two banks. Just again, just to reinforce the importance of Citi in Mexico for the core franchise from the Citi perspective, it was made a Citi in Mexico. It's about the eighth largest bank there, playing a very important role connecting Mexico and the world, the world and Mexico. Very encouraged by the leadership we see in the country as well. For Banamex, it has its own management team. It has its own external reporting now. It's a lot of work to go from having separated everything. It's now making sure we're driving the performance up, making sure that we're getting all the audited financials, getting that in place for IPO.
is a big body of work to make sure that we are ready to be IPO able at the end of the year. We are just keeping the team really focused around that. Just get this done, get this done well so that whenever regulatory approvals come through and market conditions are appropriate, we can seize the right opportunity with investors. Our goal again is the IPO is the waypoint, the destination. The next is the deconsolidation and is then the, and ultimately the full exit.
I know everyone always asks me about the IPO, and that is very important, but we're very focused on the path all the way through and making sure that we're not doing shortcuts now in the preparation that you'd end up regretting when it came to looking at how to make sure we can deconsolidate and that we can get the final exit done. We're on a mission on this one, but focused and not distracting the team with other things at the moment.
It's good to have as a business, right?
Yeah. It's pleased to see performing better. The focus actually on both franchises doesn't hurt there.
Yeah. Talking a little about financial trends and targets. Interesting start to the year, of course, as we've already walked through and discussed. The quarter started out the year very well. Obviously, some things that have been a little quite eventful. What do you see in terms of the key drivers of revenue growth from here that informs your outlook?
Okay. You've heard from us in terms of our outlook that we're looking at sort of $82.1 billion-$84.1 billion as the range. We're comfortable with that. Do we know exactly what the mix will be in the second half of the year? Nope. It's the beauty of the diversified business model that we can see the paths there of the different scenarios we've got. We're feeling comfortable around that side of things. The same from the expense and other guidance that we've given. Really the question is, what exactly happens with the rates environment? What happens with the tariffs? Where does this pan out in terms of whether it's very active with M&A? Does it end up being more active? Do IPOs come back eventually? That one may be a little bit more optimistic for this year.
We'll certainly see plenty of activity on hedging, financing, these other areas in the meantime. The rest of it's the upside because the great ungumming has to happen at some point. That will be some new waves of growth to counter where there may be other things that slow down further down.
One thing that you and Mark had talked about on the earnings calls for the last couple of years is the revenues are going up, the expenses are going down. As you get through the transformation, the simplification, there is a lot of operating leverage kind of built into the model as you look forward, and we will see how the environment adds to that. Those jaws that I just mentioned, how built into your expectation set of how you get from point A to point B on growth and returns over time?
Yeah. I think, again, I'll be horribly boring. It's the same things that Mark and I have been consistently talking about. You've seen the revenue drivers that we've got across the different businesses. Some of the mix may be different. On the expense front, we're certainly looking for next year. We've got the targets out there for around about $52.6 billion. It's the same drivers that we're looking at. Where is it that the stranded cost benefits come through as we're divesting and taking those out? Where are the benefits from the investments that we've been making coming through? Some of that in transformation and in the regular investments that we're making in the franchise to drive more efficiency. You'll also see some of the transformation costs coming down as we get more towards the end of that program.
To my mind, there's still areas that we've got investments in our controls. We've got investments we're making in areas that are still manual that will get automated. All of these will continue to have the benefits playing out into the longer term, and we'll continue. I'm also mindful we need to be investing in the franchise. We're mindful that we need to be making share buybacks as well, given where we're trading. We're very careful around the balance of all those things. Where is it we've got to make sure that we're competitive? Where is it that we're making investments that will have important payoffs on revenue or expense benefits? Where else is it that we need to be giving more money back to the shareholders? All of those things driving us to improve our returns.
Yeah. On the expense point, in terms of making sure you're making the right investments, how do you get the comfort that you're making the right amount of investments? Because on the surface, of course, it looks like cut, cut, cut as you've simplified and transformed. What's the right dial in in terms of making sure you're doing all the right forward-looking things for growth, for technology, for risk, for compliance?
I hope you can see what we've been delivering in terms of that because we have been delivering good top-line revenue growth in the different businesses. At the same time, as I'd remind everyone, we've also been divesting. You've had that element coming as a drag, as it were, on the top line. At the same time, the five businesses have been performing with the positive operating leverage and good growth. We have a very active dialogue. We've got a very good process around it. Every quarter, we're going through and looking at what are investments that we need to be making. We think about them on a multi-year basis. Equally, if something's not delivering, we've no qualms about shutting it off and having the different milestones along the way. It's a constant dialogue.
It's constantly looking at the different things that we're doing. Are they delivering? Are they delivering the way they thought we would? What does the competitive landscape look like? Where is it that AI is changing things? Where is it digital assets may be changing things? What does that mean that we need to be investing in? Are there other things that actually we dial it back because we're finding it's not as effective or it's not delivering as much? It's a bit like managing a toddler. You've got to have your eyes on everything all the time and be on top of it. It's not a sort of hands-off, hand-wavy thing. It's micromanagement by all of us to make sure that this has been done well.
Yeah. You mentioned just before that getting the returns up over time also includes returning more capital to shareholders. CET1 in the first quarter was 13.1%. You've discussed that getting to that 10% goal next year does incorporate getting the CET1 or built on a 13.1%.
Yeah, we're looking at $13.1 billion for the year.
Talk about what that progress looks like and your confidence in being able to continue to imply.
I'll be able to tell you a little bit more, Alfonso, after we get the SCB pieces through. I think importantly, we've all been pushing our regulators as well as to, can we make sure that the models are delivering results that we can all understand and that there's a bit more transparency into them? I think that will benefit us all. In the meantime, I think it's fairly simple. We like giving capital back to our shareholders. It's a very important priority given where we're trading. We've announced the $20 billion share buyback. You've seen us give back $1.75 billion on the share buybacks last quarter, a little bit more, $250 million more than we said we would do. We could see the room to do that because we had good results.
If we get good results and we have clarity on SCB, I think Mark and I, you can all do the math. We'd expect to see the buybacks ramping up through once we've got through that SCB clarity.
Yeah. Obviously, at sub tangible book, the buyback is a great use of incremental capital.
It is very much so. It puts a high bar for what we look at the investments internally as well. That's one where when we're going through the planning, we're looking at what is the stuff that's a 20% marginal ROTC benefit. We're not looking at the things that are smaller on that. Some of them may take a couple of years. It doesn't necessarily hit you year one because I don't want to be tactical in running the firm that way. We will make the right long-term decisions, but with the right short-term disciplines to it. Yeah. There's a lot of, there's some yelling and screaming that goes on amongst the management team as you're going through all of these things. There's a lot of passion because people want to invest in the business.
We're saying, yep, if you're not getting that return, it's going to the shareholder.
Just to put the other use of capital, how does dividends factor into that organic versus dividend versus buyback?
We've increased the dividend, as you've seen, a bit each time. We are very mindful that where we trade. The focus is much more to you'd rather give the marginal capital back through the buyback as opposed to the dividend. I really look forward to, hopefully in the near future, where that's a much tougher decision than it is right now.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Soon.
One question I wanted to come back to you on the capital regime. You mentioned earlier the SLR potential softening. What's the benefit to Citi? It's clear what the benefit is to the bond market. How does Citi participate differently if SLR, given that you're not bound by it?
Yeah. I think it's part of the, how do we just be our, how do we do our job as a bank? In times of stress, it will certainly ease the ability of a number of us to participate in the bond market and help support treasuries and the like at those moments. That is the stated intent from Secretary Bessent. Whereas for some other players, they are bound by it. We are not. I think we take seriously the role that we want to play in the markets. Let bank be a bank. That, in addition to lending, helping participate in those moments is an important part of what we should do. This will help in that. It does not release us so much on the other front.
Yeah. Given that it's not a constraint, would you necessarily participate that much more than you already are?
In moments of stress, it definitely could, it will be helpful. It will unquestionably be helpful. We all, as large banks and the leaders of the greatest financial system in the world and with the role as the leading global players in the world, I think all of us take seriously that role of supporting markets at times of stress. You have not asked me about the transformation yet.
Bringing all that back and including the transformation, talk about the return improvement path that you've been on, 10-11% for 2026. Just talk us through the confidence you have in that, what needs to go right, what could go wrong, and the march forward that we just kind of incorporated.
Look, I think just talk on the transformation at the moment. I think what you've been hearing from us is we feel good about the progress that we're making there. We've got a number of programs that are getting towards being operating at target state. I would liken it to building a house where you have that punch list at the end in order to get it to the state of perfection that is expected. We've got a number of the different areas getting to those target states or even operating in the target states. A number of other pieces of the broader transformation beyond the consent order is also, say, related to technology. We've got a big body of work going on at the moment in tech where we've been rationalizing the number of vendors that we've got. We've been looking at different sites.
What is the optimal number of sites we have? How do we restructure to make sure that we have people in the right places, with the right skill set for the decade ahead as well? That is an area that is a particular focus for us at the moment, in addition to the work we are doing in getting the final stages of moving from multiple platforms to single platforms. We also have quite a lot of investment going on into automation. As we have moved to single processes for doing things as well as single platforms, how do we make sure that those are as automated and sensible and AI-ready as possible? That, again, is work that goes well beyond the consent order. Those are the final stages of transformation for Citi into the bank that we want to be, the new Citi. I am feeling good about progress.
You're hearing confidence around that our business strategies are delivering what we thought they would be. A few of them even ahead of schedule, particularly the services side that has been. You're seeing banking, you're seeing wealth really coming into their own now, markets performing well. The expense base, I think what you're hearing from me is we'll carry on investing, but we still see opportunities to drive more efficiency. There will also be opportunities as we get to the end of transformation not to carry the tax that comes with that and be able to bring that elevated expense base down further. We will do that the right way that continues to invest in our safety and soundness, but it will also drive to a more efficient bank from it.
To make sure we've got the technology platform and operational disciplines so that we are really delivering at the speed, accuracy, timeliness that's required for a digital world with digital assets and other capabilities that AI is going to thrust upon us. I'm excited by it, excited by the team we've got. We've still got some good hard work ahead of us. We're not there yet. We're not done yet. It's a different Citi and we're delivering what we said we would for you. We will continue doing so with a little bit more skip in our step as we do so now.
Excellent. All right. Great. Jane, thanks so much for walking us through.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jane, for joining us, Citigroup.