I think we'll go ahead and get started here for our last banks session for the conference. I'm delighted to welcome next up we have Citigroup. From Citigroup, we have joining us Anand Selvakesari, CEO of Personal Banking and Wealth Management for Citigroup. As many of you might know, Personal Banking and Wealth Management is one of the two big business segments for Citi, and the bank has taken quite a strategic shift within strategically, which was announced and laid out at the Investor Day last year in terms of hiring of global wealth advisors within personal banking, strengthening leadership position in payments, lending, and maximizing value for the retail bank. Anand, thank you again for joining us.
Maybe, before we talk about the operating outlook, would love to go back to the Investor Day a lot and you laid out some strategic priorities. We were just discussing about you had quite a transition over the last three, four years in terms of roles. Why don't you, if you don't mind spending some time in terms of what this business is and what the strategic priorities are as you look forward?
Sure. Thanks, everyone. First of all, thank you very much for having me. And thanks, it's great to be here. Good morning to everyone. In the Investor Day, as we said, you know, Jane had announced five core businesses, two of them were in Personal Banking and Wealth Management. Last year, the Personal Banking and Wealth Management business generated $24 billion in revenues. 70% of that comes from the personal banking business in the U.S., and 30% is from the wealth business. That's sort of the top line. If we go a little deeper, let's take the wealth business first. We are about $7.4 billion of revenues last year. This is a business that we have presence in 52 cities across 20 countries. pretty global business.
We offer total wealth solutions for our customers across the wealth continuum. What do I mean by that? We basically, for our wealth clients, we want to be able to offer, and which we are offering is all products from checking, savings, credit cards, all the way to investments, lending, and to sophisticated capital market products, the entire suite, and do that globally. We don't think there's any other bank that can offer this kind of a breadth of products and that on a global scale. That's sort of our value proposition. We have three client segments within the wealth business. One is the private bank, a global business, targeting the ultra-high net worth and the high net worth clients. We have the Citigold, which is basically focused around the affluent segment.
We have Wealth at Work. This was a business that we started off by focusing on the law firm group in the U.S. where we have a dominant market share. It's basically a business that focuses on professional services. Now we're extending that to other business lines, and we'll talk a little bit more about it. That's sort of the three client segments that we have. For us, the priorities, if we look at the priorities for the wealth business, there are three of them. This is a business that we are not starting from scratch, right? We have $7.4 billion of revenues. We have a good foundation. We need to build scale. Building scale is a big priority. The second is synergies within Citi.
One of the things that we have identified is significant synergies to be unlocked within Citi, within the retail bank, within the institutional business to our wealth business. Third, as we acknowledged in the Investor Day, this is a business we haven't invested well from a technology perspective, so significant investments in technology, digital, and that's will make this business more efficient, at the same time, better client experience. Those are the top three priorities amongst many other things that we'll do. If I switch to the U.S. personal banking business, that consists of three businesses. We have the branded cards, we have the Retail Services, which is the private label cards, and then we have our retail bank. We have in the card side, we are number two issuer in the U.S., pretty strong, big card business.
Very well-diversified portfolio across the three portfolios that we have, which is the proprietary products, the private label, and the co-brands. If you look at the retail bank, we have the retail bank is a top 10 deposit franchise. We are present in six core markets. The way we look at the retail bank is that it's a very important play for the U.S. personal bank. At the same time, it's a very distinct role. While our footprint is very light, we have about 654 branches, the deposit per branch productivity is the highest in the country. When I look at the priority for the U.S. personal banking, three things. Again, the top three would be, we have to keep strengthening the leadership that we have in payments and lending.
We got to get maximum value from the retail bank network that we have. Third is we got to continue to drive the leadership on digital. We've been investing in digital for the last three, four years, and that continues to be a big play for us. That's sort of where we are in the Investor Day. Again, if you just look at the, I'll probably end by just giving you some positioning statements here. The private bank is a top five global private bank. If I look at wealth in Asia, we're top three wealth managers in Asia. If you look at Wealth at Work, we are dominant player in the law firm group in the U.S. In the card side, we are number two issuer of cards in the U.S. That's sort of our positioning for our business.
We have pretty good solid foundation to work, to build on, Ebrahim.
Sure. That was helpful. Thank you. Maybe, I guess, you mentioned about the cards business and the second-largest cards issuer. When we think about the consumer, a lot of conversation around inflation pressures, the job market. Give us a sentiment check on how you think, how you perceive the U.S. consumer and what the outlook is.
Great. I mean, of course, you are, I think, you've been hearing from everyone that the U.S. consumer is healthy. They're resilient. They are healthy. They are resilient. You know, the savings rates in the U.S. peaked, obviously, during COVID, and that's sort of coming off. Still, the savings are much higher than pre-COVID. That's why the health of the client and the resilience comes from. When we look at our cards portfolio, which is our large portfolios, and if you look at my credit losses, our credit losses in the branded cards business is running at half pre-COVID levels. In Retail Services, slightly higher, but still much lower than pre-COVID levels. What's happening?
When we sort of look at our business, what's happened is in the last couple of years, card spends has been growing very nicely, pretty strong spend. That resulted in growth in receivables. That basically resulted in growth in interest-earning balances, which is driving revenues. That's sort of the logical step that happens in the cards business. While that is happening, what we're also seeing, everybody talked a lot about payment rates in the last couple of years. Payment rates had peaked during COVID, right? I mean, the last couple of years. We are starting to see that curve also bend right now. We're starting to see payment rates sort of declining. Combination of interest-earning balances going up, payment rates declining, will logically lead to a credit normalization. That should be. That's what we should expect.
There should be no surprise with that because that's how the products work. We are seeing credit normalization. The way I would put credit normalization is in the lower FICO scores and the lower income group, if you're seeing an accelerated normalization, they're normalizing faster versus compared to the higher FICO and the higher income group. For us, it's a smaller impact. The reason being, if I look, if you look at our portfolio in cards, we're pretty much a prime portfolio. 80% of our cards portfolio is 680 and above FICO scores. It's pretty much. That's what we're seeing. If you look on the wealth side, I think the clients are basically looking for yield right now.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, that's what's fixed income.
Right.
Is very popular at this point. We're also seeing deposits shift from into CDs because of the rates. It's interesting. I mean, cash is sort of becoming an asset class now.
Right.
Because of the high rates, right? That's what we're seeing with the clients.
Got it. Maybe, I guess, pivoting to the business, I think you mentioned earlier building scale. It's a great foundation. At the same time, I think you're making a lot of investments across both sort of businesses. Give us a sense of like how much of those investments are going towards bringing infrastructure up to snuff versus innovation and kind of what the outlook looks like there.
Great question, Ebrahim. I would basically bucket into three categories of investments we're making. The first one is around concerned order and transformation.
Sure.
A top priority for the bank. That's an investment that we're making around resourcing and technology, right? That's one piece. The second piece is around our own platforms, digital and innovation like we talked, you just mentioned. One of the things that we are really focused on is on the wealth space, like I said, we are investing into our digital platforms, into our. You know, we have multiple different product platforms, consolidation of platforms. Building out a client experience side, and that's a big area of focus for us from a client and client experience, the CRM, the building a unified wealth sort of a workstation for our client servicing officers. Changing our teller platforms as the branches. A lot of work going on the client servicing side, and obviously modernizing our platform.
I know we have multiple platforms, multiple lending platforms, bringing them down to one platform, et cetera. That's another big chunk of investment. The third is on the business side, and each of the three businesses I take to look at payments and lending. Our investments there is to grow our proprietary products. We continue to refresh our products and grow our proprietary products, deepening our partner relationships. We have some great partners, and we're extending our partner relationships, so that's another area of investment. In the last two years, we have been investing into building our unsecured installment lending propositions.
Mm-hmm.
That's growing really nicely, and we'll continue to invest into that. On the retail bank, as like I mentioned, we are focused around the six core markets. We want to sort of go deeper there. You'll see the usual thing that you'll do on a retail bank, right? Refreshing your branches, renovations, relocations, and some strategic build-outs. Then on the wealth space, to me, the two big investments on talent. We were hired a lot of advisors in the last couple of years. We'll continue to hire that. Secondly, in the, apart from technology and digital, on the product platforms. Like, we need to consolidate platforms and we need to build, you know, build on the platforms that we already have.
Those are, to me, the three buckets of investments, the way we look at.
Maybe on the digital side, when we talk to a lot of your peers, right? I mean, I think there are different strategies that you see. Some are acquiring FinTech, some are partnering up. Like, do you have a preference one way or the other? Maybe we don't see that as much from externally. Just talk to us about your approach towards partnering or acquiring, smaller FinTechs to upgrade.
We are open to all. Right? We don't tend to build everything ourselves, right? Things that we can partner, we will partner, and things that we can buy from outside, we will buy because that's gives us a... If it's a core competence that we don't have, we don't have to build. In the past, it used to be some of those, but right now, we're pretty much open to all. For example, I'll give you some of the examples that we are on the wealth space. Things that we build and things that we partner, right? As an example, so we build our own, what we call a Citi Self Invest, which is our own brokerage platform, which is online trading, et cetera.
When we wanted to do insurance, right, and we wanted to sort of build our insurance, we went and partnered with TD Cowen, you, the TD Cowen side, so get the wealth insured on the side. We do that. We do a mix of that. Even on infrastructure, we do the same. We are not stuck to one particular way of approaching it.
Understood.
Yeah.
I guess, maybe drilling down to starting with the cards business. One, just remind us in terms of how you think about the competitive positioning of the business. Are you taking share, losing share? Areas where you do want to take share, maybe start there.
Yeah. see, first of all, we started from a really good position, right? We're number two issuer.
Right.
Significant strength in our leadership position that we have. If I just drill down a little deeper into our cards businesses. If I look at our proprietary cards. Our proprietary cards has a whole set of value propositions that we build on, and it has co-brands, and it's got our proprietary cards. The co-brands, we have marquee names, Costco, American Airlines, AT&T. If you look at our Retail Services business, again, it's big marquee names, The Home Depot, Best Buy, Macy's, Wayfair, et cetera. For us, both the proprietary cards as well as the co-brands and the Retail Services are all equally important because we really like the diversity of our portfolio.
We are probably one of the most diversified portfolios that we have in the marketplace on cards. Many of our partners have been there for decades. Like American Airlines, not many people know we're going to celebrate 35 years with them.
Mm-hmm.
Home Depot is 20 years. Strong partnerships we've had for years. What we have done, Ebrahim, in the last three, four years is that one of the things that, we have sort of consciously switched from a card becoming just a payment mechanism, we have sort of shifted to creating an integrated set of solutions and an experience for our customers, and let me explain that. Earlier, the card used to be just a swipe. Today, what we want to provide the customer at the point of transaction is a series of choices.
Mm-hmm.
You can actually go to a point of. When you're making a transaction, you can either pay with the plastic, without a plastic. That's the starting point. That's the first choice. Without the plastic you have in your wallets. The second choice is you can pay with the financing. You want to take a financing at the point of sale, offer the point of sale financing. Or if you want to use your rewards, your points and you've got miles, we are making the points fungible as currency. You can use your points, you can burn your points at the point of purchase. That's another way you can do. The third is after you've done the transaction, you go back, you have choices. You can either pay in full, you can revolve.
At the same time, you can also look at transactions and say, "Okay, I would like to actually finance a transaction which I didn't finance at the point of sale." We give that option too. If you're not worried about the transaction, you just want to take a cash loan within the credit card line, we also offer that. The interesting thing is not only offering these products, but offering them with the right experience.
Right.
We put it all digitally. It's all two, three clicks away. It's very seamless and real time. The other thing, the important thing in the cards business is that you need to keep the customers engaged. That is the power of a business when you want to grow the business. The way we're keeping the clients engaged, we have now built a merchant offer platform. Throughout the year, customers are getting discounts. That's one way of engaging. We're going to launch a travel portal very soon.
Right.
We're building adjacencies around our card business. Providing choice and building adjacencies for engagement. That's the way we're building our cards business, and that's resulting in the growth that we're seeing now.
Some of the things that you mentioned in terms of the features at point of sale before, all of that is live today?
It is, absolutely. It's been, it's a point of sale financing and the whole, installment lending. In quarter four, we had a 74%-75% growth year-over-year. That's growing very nicely, and it's pretty seamless, and it's a great experience on your app.
Got it. The one thing that you hear when we think about like payments and payment solutions, and I'm digressing from the question but, like embedded banking and like partnering with, you know, software companies or vendors in terms of providing those services, does that impact your business? Like, how do you think about embedded banking and what that means?
Interesting. This question, I'm often asked, I mean, what happens? We've also seen buy now, pay later.
Right.
The lending options that have been coming. We look at our cards business that, you know, in 2019, I think we ended the year with about roughly $450 billion of sales and spends on our cards. Last year, we ended about $575 billion. We grew significantly.
Right.
Grew organically despite the macro environment, despite all the buy now, pay later lending that is going on. This business on its own, very resilient. The model that we've built is an experience model that is there. Having said that, we do partner. You know, where we need to partner, like merchant offers, we do partner.
Sure.
Like travel portal, we're going to partner. For us, it's basically have core value propositions, provide choice, and then partner where you can actually bring value to the customer. On its own, it's very resilient, and then when you partner, it becomes much more stronger. That's what we're seeing.
Got it. I guess going back to the partner cards, you mentioned Home Depot, American Airlines, One. Are there a lot more newer opportunities out there? Are the economics of the business attractive enough to engage in new partnerships?
I would say there's lots to do even with the existing partners. That's where I'll start from, right? When I came in 2019 to the U.S. and I looked at the cards business, we were basically having singular card-only relationship with these partners. Now we're expanding that relationships into why only cards? We can do lending, right? We can offer banking. We can do rewards. That's what we're now doing with our partners. With our existing partners, there's so much we can do in terms of just expanding the breadth of the product line and also adding more products. You know, we just launched a new product with AT&T. We launched one new product with The Home Depot as a new card. I think there's a lot more opportunities to do.
Obviously, in the marketplace, you always come across some opportunities that are there that we can actually work on. We have a latent opportunities sitting with us where we are basically deepening our partners now.
Got it. Yeah.
I guess before moving to some of the other topics, a little less exciting, I guess. The CFPB came out with a proposal on credit card late fees a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, Citi is a big card issuer. Like, how do we think about One, what do you think about the proposal? How should we handicap the impact to Citi from if the proposal is implemented?
Yeah. We have been assessing the late fee proposal. Probably I would like to start before getting into the proposal, I'd like to start by saying, you know, our focus has always been to remind customers to make their payments on time.
Right.
That's what we've always focused on. We have number of, sort of, mechanisms and channels that we use, emails, texts, you know, statements to provide alerts to customers that their payment is due, make your payments on time. That's a starting point. I mean, that's where we all start from. Look at our business itself, because it's not a straightforward answer, and I'll tell you why. We look at the business, if you look at our cards portfolio, branded cards is 2/3 of our portfolio, and Retail Services is 1/3 of our portfolio. The branded cards, if you look at the branded cards business, over 85% of our branded cards portfolio is FICO 680 and higher. Really prime.
Right. Yeah.
In the Retail Services, 70% are 680 and above. You also have to understand in this Retail Services business, we actually share economics with our partner, right? The late fee impact is not one-to-one on Retail Services because of the economic sharing. That's sort of the background here. Having said that, we will. You know, we are assessing it. Obviously, we, as we always do, we will comply with the regulatory standards when it's finalized and it's ready to be executed. In the meantime, what we're now doing is we're collaborating with all the stakeholders, working with our partners, working with regulators, working with the industry, trade associations, to assess the impact. There will be some impact when it's executed.
You know, the way we will look at it is that it does not really impact in any way our broader strategy.
Right.
or the targets that we set ourselves for the medium term. That's the way I would sort of put it.
Is there a skew between retail and on the late fees with mobile exposed to one versus the other?
I don't really know.
Okay.
It's not very different. No.
Got it. Maybe moving to the retail bank. One, you mentioned, like, the six metro markets where you're focused on. One, as someone who followed the industry for, like, over two decades, I always wrestle with this, whether or not the U.S. consumer is ready for an online bank and growing that strategy. You've seen some of the digital native companies trying and having mixed success.
Yeah.
One, give us a sense of the value proposition of that retail franchise you have, how that sort of collaborates with the rest of the bank, and just more broadly in terms of how you see that shaping out as we think about more digital and whether or not there's an future for a digital-only bank in the U.S.
Like we said in the Investor Day, the retail bank has an important role to play for the U.S. personal banking. I also wanna make a point it's a distinct role to play, and that's the big difference. The way we look at it's a very distinct role to play. From our perspective, the two primary roles that we expect from the retail bank is to become a good feeder for our wealth business, and I'll explain that.
Secondly, a good provider of low-cost, high-quality deposits, right? To back up our lending businesses. That's the two primary drivers the way we look at it. Like I said, it's, we have the six core markets. We'll go deeper in the six core markets and acquire more market share around the six core markets. We have. If you look at our... Like I said at the beginning, while we have 650+ branches, our productivity deposits per branch is highest in the industry. It's about $290 million per branch. Our branches are very productive f rom that perspective. From a wealth referral perspective, last year we got 60,000 client referrals from our branches to our wealth business. That gives me 50,000 in 2021.
There, what we set out to do from a distinct sort of value proposition, that's happening. We also want to make sure that, you know, like to the point that we want to maximize the value. I mean, beyond these two, what else we want to do? We, so the retail branches fuel our small business lending. We believe that's a significant opportunity that we are sort of building out. That's the other piece that it'll build out. The way we've approached this is that light footprint we have, we like that light footprint. We're going to complement the light footprint with our digital strategy.
Mm-hmm.
Right? That gives us the national access. We expect in the medium term 30% of our deposits to come from our digital deposits.
Mm-hmm.
We have built out all our capabilities and all. We've got really built out the experience from a customer perspective, and we feel good. See, one of the things that we do not want is to be a digital offering just to be chasing rates.
Right.
Right? You want it to be a relationship and a value proposition that actually builds a relationship. That's the way we are approaching. That's how we built all these elements of, you know, having digital deposits. We have now Citi Self Invest, where you can invest. You have all the lending capabilities. Everything is now digitally all coming together.
Right.
That's where we're gonna build relationship with customers.
I guess to that point, right? I think a lot of online banks become rate sensitive, attract rate sensitive deposit. How do you just give us a sense of how do you grow low-cost, high-quality deposits in the current framework, in this rate backdrop that we are in?
See, yeah. See, in this current. I mean, first of all, you have to be competitive with rates.
Right.
in the environment.
Yeah.
That's one. You do not want to build a value proposition that's rate is the only driver.
Right.
Because that is not sustainable. Within market conditions, you've got to be, you know, be flexible enough to sort of be competitive with rates. For us, as you bring the clients, once you've got them in, you've got to deepen relationships.
Right.
You need to have it. That is why we've got the investments that we do the Self Invest. We've got the lending capabilities. The clients can take a credit card. The whole sequence of things, which four years back we don't have everything digitally sort of organized, now we have everything digitally put together in a seamless manner. That's where we believe the strength is going to come as we build those relationships.
Understand. I guess maybe on the wealth strategy?
Mm-hmm.
One, if you don't mind, just the differences between the global and the U.S. strategy, like how we're going about that. I'd also, like you mentioned, no one can compete with Citi on wealth management given this kind of your platform. Just remind us, if you don't mind spending a few minutes, because oftentimes I'm talking to investors and they're like, "How competitive is Citi as a wealth manager in Asia?" I would appreciate spending some time because I don't think people fully understand that-
Yeah.
value proposition. Yeah.
Great. Probably I'll repeat a little bit.
Sure.
See, like, let's start from the top. If you look at our wealth business, I'll start with the client segment. We have the private bank, a full service global private bank that we have, which is operating in 20 countries, 52 cities that we have presence in. This is a business where 25% of the world's billionaires bank with us, right? The average net worth of these clients are over $400 million. It's a top five global private bank. That's the ultra-high net worth, high net worth segment. Citigold is a solid foundation that we have in Citigold in the affluent segment, which we target affluent clients in the U.S. and in our three wealth hubs, in Hong Kong, Singapore and in the Middle East, in UAE.
Mm-hmm.
That's the three wealth hub that we have. We have the Wealth at Work that we talked about, predominantly a U.S. offering, which was a predominant market share with law firms. Now we are basically building out newer verticals, asset management, private equity, et cetera, right? That's the piece. When you look at the $7.4 billion of revenues last year that we generated in the wealth business, little over 50% comes from the U.S., right? About 30% from Asia. That's sort of your breakdown. 80%... Two big regions-
Right.
Important regions. 80% comes from the U.S. and Asia. Let's unbundle U.S. and then I'll unbundle Asia. In the U.S., what we want to do, like I said, we wanna build scale across all the three segments. Be it Citigold, Citi, the private bank, Citigold, Wealth at Work, well, we want to continue to build scale. That's the first thing. Second thing, we want to get the synergies going like we had the 60,000 referrals from the. We need to continue to build on the synergies because that's the latent power that we have within the firm. That's important. Third is everything we talked about in investing in digital technology, et cetera.
The fourth interesting piece, as we brought the businesses together, see when the business was Citigold and the business was private bank. We brought them together, we had this whole wide space. Citigold used to be basically customers were roughly about $5 million-$10 million. Then your private bank is $25 million and above.
Mm-hmm.
You had this wide space in between 10-25, which nobody was really focused on because we were very different organizations independently managed. That's the big wide space, which is a fast-growing space across, and that's a big opportunity as we call it the high net worth opportunity. Now we have the full wealth continuum, which we build on. The last one on the U.S. for me, when I look at the U.S. wealth business, is that if you look at the revenue mix of the U.S. wealth business, it skews towards interest income because of the skew towards banking and lending versus fee revenues, versus investments.
That's an area of opportunity that we identified, where we're going to be basically penetrating investment products into our wealth clients to get a higher share of the fee revenues. We're getting a good share of their banking and lending revenues. We need to get a higher share of their investment revenues. Those are the five things from a U.S. perspective. If you look at Asia, we're a top tier wealth manager. We are big in Asia. We're a top tier wealth manager, a fantastic brand in Asia. Solid business in Hong Kong and Singapore that has been established for over a period of time. We have our digital capabilities, technology capabilities are much more advanced there compared to the other regions.
For me, the two or three priorities in Asia, one is we wanna build scale in private bank and Citigold. Those are the two.
Mm-hmm.
sort of segments where we want to really start, build further scale. The second thing in Asia is to capture the offshore market in China. Okay? That's a big wealth market. you know, we have Hong Kong as a, you know, our wealth hub.
Sure.
To capture that presence there. That's important for us from that perspective. The high net worth segment that we talked about, the wide space, that applies to Asia too, as we build the wealth continuum along with our clients. Obviously while digital and technology is advanced in Asia, we need to continue to build on it because that region is like moves faster in digital than the rest of the world. That's how we look at it. We are, you know, truly excited about the opportunity in both these regions and a little bit of a different scale in both.
I guess just two follow-up questions. One, when you think about penetrating better on wealth management fee, revenue products, like how do you do that? Is it technology? Is it personal people hiring, tying up in order to have those products available to offer to your clients? Just give us like in a practical sense, how do you do that?
It's a combination of two, three things. I think it starts from having the right coverage model. Bankers and the bankers need to be supported by investment counselors or investment specialists as we talk about. One of the things that we have identified is that the ratio that we have is probably on the lower side, investment specialists versus bankers, so we need to increase the ratio, so hire more investment specialists. That's what we've been doing.
Okay.
Along with hiring the bankers. That's important because they are then going to sort of help penetrate the clients. Secondly, the infrastructure, technology, digital capabilities that we're building. That's two. I think on the product side, we're pretty good. We have pretty strong product suite. While you can always improve on it, but these are the two things to me, where get the right coverage model, add more bankers and the investment advisors in the right ratios, and then you have the digital capabilities supporting it.
Got it. I guess the other thing would be, you talked about a lot of building and rewiring of things, right? When we think about, obviously Jane and Mark talked about the expense outlook during the earnings call. Give us a sense of like where we are in the journey of making those investments, having the right people already in the place. Like are we 50% through or 70% through? Like where do we stand?
On the wealth business, as it's more take you like two years back, so when Jane announced a couple of years back in 2021, these are two independent businesses.
Right.
The private bank was part of the institutional business and the Citigold business was part of the consumer bank. Two independently managed businesses, two different platforms, and everything was different. Now what we've done over the last couple of years is bringing them together. We have one management structure, one set of functional leads, et cetera. Organizationally, we brought them together. Some of the examples to tell you the way we are handling this is, for example, let's take the value propositions, right. We had products being developed and managed in different places. Now what we're saying is let's create central product libraries. That's what we're doing.
We create central product libraries, and what we do is based on the client segment, based on client needs and client suitability, you draw from that one library instead of having multiple different places where you're gonna be developing products and managing products. Same thing with research, same thing with content.
Right.
Now we're starting to integrate all of that into libraries that you can actually sort of build end to end and then start draw from. The second thing that we're seeing is the technology. Like I said, you know, we have on the lending side, margin lending, we have four platforms, for example. We are now converging to one platform. Creates more efficiency, better customer experience. Because of the different platforms that we have, for example, if you're a client or even if you're a client advisor, you probably today logs in, log into five or six different platforms. We are now converging that to two or one platform, one login, so that, you know, make things easier. A number of things from the infrastructure side that we're actually building out, and that's making good progress.
Right.
It's value proposition. The third big piece for me is the synergies. I keep talking about synergies-
Right.
The referrals that we get, client referrals, not only from the retail bank, from the institutional business, commercial bank, the corporate bank, they're all wealth, potential wealth clients.
Right.
All of that is now sort of getting into play. Those are some of the things that we're working, and we're making really good progress around the integration.
Got it.
All right.
We only a few minutes left.
Yeah.
The one thing I want to touch upon is you mentioned the health of the consumer and, like, when we think in credit normalization, one, from externally, what are the one or two data points we should be watching when we think about assessing health of the consumer and how it impacts your sort of the consumer exposure? Give us a sense of what normalized credit losses look like relative to where we've been.
Interesting point. The only way I can tell you, Ebrahim, there's no single data point.
Sure.
We look at multiple data points. Both internal and external. External data points, the obvious ones you look at is unemployment rate has a high correlation to your cards businesses. You look at HPI, you look at yield curve, you look at inflation, savings rates. A whole bunch of things there.
Sure.
-on the, out there. Internally, we basically look at our portfolios and subsegments, and we analyze the customer behavior, so payment rates, payment pattern, minimum payment, you know, how many customers are paying minimum pay, was it not paying minimum pay.
Right.
We look at all of that because each of those data points are very important. The collective of all of this is what sort of defines the next steps that we take as we're taking decisions. Unfortunately, it's a whole bunch of data.
Sure. Yeah.
It's not a singular data. From a credit cost perspective, like I said, our credit cost has been, you know, half of what we saw pre-COVID. Quarter four, I'll give you quarter four, the actual. Branded cards quarter four, our credit NCL was 1.68%, right? Our normalized range typically was 3%-3.3%.
Mm.
Right? If you look at the Retail Services, Q4, we're about 3.3%. That's the actuals, NCL. The normalized range is about 5%-5.3% there. Still ways to go there.
Right.
We believe, like I said, as the interest-earning balances grow, payment rates sort of bend, you'll have revenues growing. At the same time, logically, you'll have credit normalizing. We think, sometime next year, similar first half of next year, we start to see the normalized range.
Right. In order to get to normalized, do we need to see a meaningful slowdown in the job market to get there? I mean, and I know you mentioned it's not one data point, but in the job environment we are in today, just it's hard to get to even the normalized levels.
Yeah. Yeah. The low unemployment rate is keeping.
Right.
consumer resilient. As you start seeing the interest-earning balances continue to grow and that loans start
Right.
The payment rates, that curve bends, then you will see the normalization.
Right.
It's the extent of normalization. It's the magnitude of the normalization is what will define based on the unemployment rates.
Got it. I guess maybe if you go back, I mean, the world's changed dramatically from today versus a year ago, and then even relative to when during your Investor Day. It's hard to have, like, medium-term targets and being tied to that. Like, how confident do you feel despite all the macro changes that you can achieve the targets you've laid out for sort of the business for both in Personal Banking and Wealth Management?
I mean, if you take 2022, despite all the macros, Citi overall met its revenue guidance.
Sure.
We also have pretty accelerated strong performance across many of our many areas. If you look at my business, the personal banking wealth business, we grew revenues 4% last year. The U.S. personal banking, which is 70% of our PBW business, grew 7%. Within that, if you look at the cards businesses, they grew double-digit revenues in the last 2 quarters. Strong momentum. You know, we exited 2022 with strong momentum. We are getting into 2023 with pretty strong momentum. January was a good month in terms of, you know, the momentum continues across those dimensions we talked about spends, interest-earning balances, et cetera.
That's continuing. On the wealth, obviously the macros were, we had some adverse macros last year. Asia was more impacted than the rest of the regions. If I look at outside Asia, we grew revenues 3% despite the macros. And then now that in the last few weeks and months with Asia opening up, with China and Hong Kong opening up, we are starting to see client activity picking up very nicely there. You know, we feel confident. We feel confident given that we're exiting 2022 strong. We're entering 2023 with a good momentum.
With the Asia opening up on the wealth side and with the U.S. consumer being resilient, we feel confident on the targets that we have for the medium term.
Got it. That's good to hear. I know we have a few minutes. Wanted to just open the r oom and see if anyone in the room had a question. If so, please raise your hand. If not, go ahead. Yep.
Maybe when you were talking about having one global. Oh, sorry. You were talking about having a great global offering and that sort of could be interesting, right? If you have like a global active customer who is traveling the globe, very nice to have that Citigroup bank account. You also as Citigroup as a whole is closing countries one after the other, so you're becoming less global every minute. Is that a problem for you or do you sort of just sort of deal with it?
See from a wealth business perspective, as you can see, the way we constructed the our strategies around. That's U.S., and then we have wealth hubs. Typically from wealth business, these are clients who are basically investing either in their territory or offshore, right? They could also have booking centers outside their regions. Hong Kong is a wealth hub, covers again the China region. We have Singapore covering the Southeast Asia region. We have UAE covering the Middle East region. We have European presence, and we have. We are pretty well covered. We don't see that as a disadvantage at all. In fact, it's, you know, it just gives us this good global connect that we have.
Sure.
These are all the centers that typically wealthy individuals actually bank with.
Correct.
We have booking centers in Luxembourg, in Geneva, in, you know, in London. We don't see that as a disadvantage at all. No.
Right.
I guess, go ahead. Yep.
Are you looking to increase the financial advisors in the United States? If so, do you envision them being in the branch offices or in some type of centralized location where their business is referred to them?
Absolutely. We have been already increasing our financial advisors and we're going to both on the private bank side as well as Citigold side, both bankers. Basically, the way we look at client advisors are bankers, investment counselors, and also financial advisors. We have been growing them, and we have plans to grow at least around 10% compounded growth for the next in the medium term. They will be sitting in different places. I mean, there are folks who sit in the offices that you centralized office, and the folks who are gonna be attached to branches. Absolutely. That's an important part of our strategy to build scale that you need to invest in talent, and especially in the client advisor front.
Correct. Yep.
One of your, or one of the largest wealth manager, recently has facing some issues, and they have a presence in Asia as well. Did you see any benefit of their troubles benefiting you, like, in terms of the client flows?
See, usually, yeah. I mean, I don't want to talk specifics. Generally, what we do is see these type of opportunities come where you do have talent that's available, and you also have clients who are looking for alternatives. Yes.
I guess maybe just to wrap it up on one question I had was, I think you started Citi in 1991. You must have started at 10, I think, when you were.
Twelve.
Wow. Just give us some insight. Obviously, Citi's gone through a lot, like investors have looked, seen, the last, two decades. You worked with Jane for a long time. I think the last year was a big day in terms of update. Give us a sense of, I think the question you often get asked is why is this time different for Citi? Which I think you have an awesome vantage point to address that question. Why is this time different?
Yeah. You just called out my age. I've been here for too long. I've seen a lot. Citi, it is very different and I'll tell you why, and not because I'm sitting here, but I'll tell you why it is really different. It starts with the strategy first. I think we now have a very clear strategy. That's the starting point. We have five core businesses that we're going to focus on, and that businesses play to our strengths, right? The global footprint, global network, and a simplified model. That's an important starting point. The second thing that probably you all will not see is that there's a huge sense of urgency within the organization to execute and to deliver.
Right.
Some of the things which you'll see externally is the speed at which we are getting our divestitures done, right?
Yep.
At the speed at which we're doing. There's a big sense of urgency in the firm. The third thing, which, I've been for a long time here, we are this time around making all the right investments. You know, we had under invested in infrastructure technology in the past. We're making those right investments to become a modern and efficient bank, which is a little different from the past.
Yeah.
The fourth thing, again, it's a very important aspect. There's a big cultural change that's happening within Citi, right? Jane is driving the culture change where we need to all work together, you know, breaking down silos, the getting the synergies done, succeeding together, winning together is a big mantra there. Along with the culture change, last but not the least, is accountability and ownership. Management is held accountable to deliver and to execute. We have it in our scorecards, we have it in our KPIs, we have regular cadence on how we are measuring and tracking all of this. It is really different. The clarity, the purpose, the urgency, and just the mindset that we all want to win is very different. The troops are all rallying behind that.
Having been in the bank for a long time, this is really different this time around.
Sure. We're really excited to see the progress. Thank you, Anand.
Thank you very much. Thanks.