MUMBAI: Citigroup’s plan to eliminate about 20,000 jobs globally through 2026 is unlikely to affect its India workforce, a senior executive said. Under chief executive Jane Fraser, who took the top job in 2021, the bank has been trying to streamline its operations and has already sold retail businesses in over a dozen markets.
Ernesto Torres Cantu, Citi’s head of International and responsible for markets outside North America, told Mint that the bank had already carried out a significant portion of the planned reductions elsewhere and did not expect India to be impacted, citing competitiveness and productivity as key factors.
After taking on the role in 2023 overseeing 93 markets and moving to London, Cantu said he told Fraser that operating across such a wide geography meant the bank’s “never sleeps” tagline could, in his case, feel especially apt.
Edited excerpts:
If you review your decision to move out of retail banking, do you think that was a hasty step for India at least?
No, it was the right decision. Three years after we decided to exit the retail bank everywhere, except the US, our balance sheet in India is 25% bigger than what it was together with the retail bank. Our volume of sales or our revenues are 30% larger than what it was with the combined entity.
Citi plans to reduce its workforce by 20,000 globally by 2026, which I’m sure is going to impact your India headcount as well, right?
We have done a significant part of that, of those 20,000 you’re talking about, and we have done it in other places, not in India. I don’t expect it to be in India because of the competitiveness. Competitiveness is a combination of two things. Price is one thing, but even more important is productivity.
A lot of foreign investors are looking away and have been selling India investments. They don’t find India attractive. What do you think?
I think that is more of a circumstantial matter. There are many or some unknowns, right, that have nothing to do with India, with the world economy, that impact India, particularly the war in West Asia.
The other one is the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on India, because it’s an economy based on services and the growth in has not been as fast as the government wants. So those unknowns are what makes it hard to decide where to invest.
Investors have two categories. Those that invest in financial assets, and then investors that invest in the country and have operations here, like we do. I don’t see any of those leaving India. I just had lunch with many of those foreign companies that work here in India, and 70% of them said that their employment in India was going to grow in the next year.
Some Indian companies like Sun Pharma have made overseas acquisitions. Do you see more Indian industrialists looking at investing abroad?
In general, have focused more on the internal market versus external markets. So you don’t have many global Indian companies. I think that is something that should change in the future not because it’s better to invest outside than investing in India. When I ask them that question, the answer they give me is: Ernesto, give me a country that is a better opportunity than India and I will invest there and they are right.
I think part of going elsewhere means that the competition, the abilities that you obtain by operating in other geographies. What you learn from those markets that make you better in your home country and make you more and more competitive. I think that is something that we would very much like to see in Indian companies going global.
There’s a lot of restructuring happening in global supply chains and since Citi is placed in every market, do you see some of these factories coming to India?
Supply chains started to reaccommodate after covid-19 pandemic, not just because of the announced last year. Companies and countries said there are certain things that we need to produce locally, or at least close to us, because it represents too high of a risk that it is disrupted elsewhere and then it impacts us.
If you look at global trade, internationally, in the last few years, it has not come down. It is still at a very high level compared to global GDP. What has increased is the amount of trade between emerging markets versus emerging markets with developed markets. That has continuously increased since the pandemic and that was, again, the case in 2025.
I expect that to continue. So you’ll see some flows that used to go to one country, will go to another one. Does that represent an opportunity to India? Absolutely, yes.
Can you share some use cases of AI in Citi right now?
We rolled it out to 182,000 colleagues, including in India, for personal use and personal productivity and also use it in technology coding and development of technology, of software. The improvement in productivity there is in double digits, very relevant. We are applying it to the main processes of the bank.
Citi also showcased at its investor day an AI-enabled banker– Citi Sky–for wealth clients. It’s available 24/7, and we are a global bank and clients would otherwise have to wait until opening hours to get the advice or do whatever they wanted to do. But now it’s available 24/7.