The Long View: Interview with Jane Fraser, CEO of Citi

The Long View: Interview with Jane Fraser, CEO, of Citi

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“The Angle” Music

Cold OPEN “…every year you're the CEO, you'll
have fewer and fewer people wanting to tell you what's actually happening and
what's really going on. And you need to build different ears and listening
skills…”

Eric Veiel

Welcome back to The Angle from T. Rowe Price, a podcast for
curious investors. I'm Eric Veiel, head of global investments and chief
investment officer here at T. Rowe Price Associates. In this episode, I'm
excited to sit down with Jane Fraser, chief executive officer of Citi, one of
the world's largest and most global banks. Jane became CEO in March of 2021 and
has helped modernize the bank for the digital age.

Jane, thank you so much for being on The Angle. It's great
to have you.

Jane Fraser

Oh, I'm honored to be here.

Eric Veiel

Well, it's, it's really exciting to spend some time with
you. You know, Citigroup's a stock that I covered as an analyst, but it was
many years ago, and, it's fun to reconnect with the company and the story.
You've done an amazing job.

Jane Fraser

It's a new Citi.

Eric Veiel

It's a new Citi. Well said. Maybe let's kind of start there.
So, you know, Citi’s visions to be the preeminent banking partner for
institutions with cross-border needs. And, you know, one of the things that
strikes me is that we're at a little bit of a point now where it seems like
we're challenging the idea of globalization. How do you think about that as
you're setting the strategy for Citi?

Jane Fraser

Yeah, at the moment, if anything, it's making the strategy
even more relevant because globalization isn't dead, but it's really changed
and it's changing. And we saw that with Covid, we saw it with the war in
Ukraine with a big ramifications for food, energy supply chains around the
world, like all the flows were moving. Thinking about defense started changing,
financial flows changed. Then of course, all of the AI revolution, and all of
the needs there changed. Energy again, changed financial flows, changed
technology flows, geopolitics change, technology flow, all of these different
things. Tariffs. Again, as the US has shifted from, you know, the great global
coordinator to now more of one of national self-interest. That's put another
change through.

And so for companies and individuals that need to tap into
markets around the world, the need to have one single player that they can call
upon that understands what's happening on the ground in incredible depth and
sophistication of it and familiarity, and be able to move things around
seamlessly. That has been really, really invaluable. And history matters around
the world still. So having, running a bank that's 200 plus years old, but in
many geographies over a century, that actually means, you know, they've see,
we've helped them through the good, bad and ugly. And so as things change, they
still, they come back to Citi because they know that we will be there able to
innovate and help them adapt.

Eric Veiel

Yeah, that's amazing. That institutional partnership is
something that's hard to replicate if not impossible. You've had that kind of
experience.

Jane Fraser

Yeah, China’s been 123 years. We're older than the Bank of
China. India is the same number of years. So that that, that history,
particularly in Asia, is very helpful right now because there's just a
relationship and trust that transcends politics.

Eric Veiel

One of the things that you've done is make a bit of a pivot
from the, from your strategy, where you also had a lot of local consumer banks
in these different regions; started to pull back from that and really focus on
these institutional relationships, maybe talk a little bit about the, the
decision to do that and what you had to give up, if anything, as part of it.

Jane Fraser

Yeah, it, it for me, it started with what was happening in
the world, particularly in financial services that in the local businesses you
need a tremendous local scale. There weren’t the same synergies in businesses
that were more locally defined. So credit cards, branch banking, onshore
wealth, SMEs. Very local and heavily locally regulated, very few synergies
globally. Whereas pre- the great financial crisis there were more. Today, no.
But for those local businesses, for me, it became very clear that we should
focus the bank on the global businesses that could be run off global platforms.
Exit the local, and then really double down on where we're quite a unique bank.
There are very, very few banks in the world. I can't even name more than 4 or 5
that operate in that sort of multi-jurisdictional way that we do. It’s a
much-needed capability. So, it's the brave, the bold or the brave comes in
saying, okay, we're going to exit a lot of businesses that were historically
what Citi was iconic and known for globally. And instead we're going to double
down on the ones where we're unique, that have interdependencies and linkages
between them, and that we are going to be the disruptor again.

Eric Veiel

That's great. I definitely want to get into being the
disruptor because I would tell you in 20, you know, back when I was covering
the stock a decade or so ago, we wouldn't have associated Citigroup and
disruptor in the same sentence. So excited to, to jump into that. Before we get
into that, just with that global perspective that you have, you know, what are
you hearing from, you know, customers right now? We just had a soft jobs
report. Feels like things are, you know, slowing down a little bit, a little bit
of hesitation to invest either in, in people or capex right now.

Jane Fraser

I think, well, first of all, the good news now is that there
is more clarity. I mean, I think the piece that's been the most difficult the
last three, four months has been, we knew some of the, we knew the direction,
but we didn't know magnitude. And in tariffs that's meaningful. We didn't have
clarity yet on the tax situation. The deregulation was an important promise,
but not clear where it's going. Now there is a lot more clarity. With clarity
companies can act. And we're not all the way there yet, but I think there's a
there's a much more sense of what do we need to deal with. And it's impressive
if you think how resilient and adaptable multinational corporations and the
American entrepreneur is today. Had to be, from Covid in a whole range of
technological advance wars, goodness knows what else we've been dealing with.
We are agile and good at adapting and being resilient. And I think that
strength is really coming to the fore. I see America on the front foot. I see
American corporates on the front foot. May not love everything going on, may
love some pieces. But they're starting to act, and I think that will, that
means that we will avoid recession. We can expect some slowing growth. We can
expect prices increasing. We can expect a bit of pain, but it's feeling more
manageable. And it's not coming in a big tidal wave. It's starting to come
through now, but now I think we're now going to see some slowing. That that one
we will.

Eric Veiel

It's interesting. It wasn't, it wasn't evident from second
quarter results for you, or any of your major peers. Credit losses seem really
well contained across the industry, and it feels like people are looking for
the, you know, the ghost of the of this, that this is going to scare us on the
credit side. Do you think there's something that we're missing or is it just
the resiliency?

Jane Fraser

I don’t think we're going to see it. I mean, for our client
base, we're a bit biased because we've got 85% of our clients are investment
grade, and they've got big diversified business models. So they can, they can
adapt, they can take some of the pain when it comes through and then drive,
drive efficiencies. Where I worry a bit more is the SME and the mid-market
companies at the, at the lower end. Because they have less resiliency. And so I
think that's where we'll probably see some more of the signs of stress. It's, I
would call it a low churn labor market at the moment. We've got less
immigration than we had. So, you don't have the same influx of new labor
looking for jobs. You've got hirings obviously slowing, you've got attrition
way down. So, it's a different labor market than the one we've had, but it's
not setting off alarm bells either.

Eric Veiel

You know, you all have had results now that are starting to
put you on your front foot. We were talking about this before we started a
little bit about being able to play offense again. As you think about the
opportunity to start to deploy capital over the next, let's call it three ish
years. What are the areas that get you really excited?

Jane Fraser

Our returns are not where I want them to be. We have a
waypoint target for next year. And then I have, you know, how do we then get
that up to, much higher than that for the longer term. And that's the work that
we're, we've got going on at the moment. So if I go of different areas in
financing: the private capital space, private asset space for markets is a very
lucrative one for us. And I see it as a quite a win-win relationship and
partnership for us with many of our clients who are in the private capital,
private asset space. And broadly, there is a huge need for energy financing the
data centers. It's, what, eight, probably 30 to $50 billion each that need to
get built around the world. The structuring and helping support with that is an
important area. There's a lot of energy needed in the world. So, there's a
whole range of different areas that need financing. So that’s, that's one where
we see a lot of opportunity globally, with the U.S. really leading a lot of the
way.

Then I see other opportunities in areas for us like prime
finance. We’ve been building. We've got a strong equities platform that we've
been investing in over the last few years. So that's one where we just want to
get more volume, leverage our client relationships, and keep putting more of
the balances onto our platform. I see in banking; we've been taking share.
We've been getting some fantastic talent from the market, marrying with some
very strong internal talent. And, on the investment banking front, particularly
with sponsors, but also technology, health care have all been prime growth
areas, because every industry has a tech adjacency to us. So that that I feel
very good about.

Services - we'll probably touch on digital assets. I see I
see a pretty exciting opportunity, particularly in the tokenized space,
probably a little bit more than Stablecoin. But we'll, we'll, we'll be making
sure we've got options on that space as well. Plus, just the growth opportunity
from the changes happening in the world in payments and liquidity financing is
a is big opportunity for us in services. And then the credit card space as we
build out the ecosystem around our cards franchise. We've got good, good growth
there. So I feel, I don't feel a lack of abundance of growth, both from
innovation as well as deepening with clients and then of geopolitical and other
shifts that are going on.

Eric Veiel

Well, you hit on almost. Yeah. You hit on almost every one
of your, your major businesses there. Maybe if we go back, I'm curious, you
know, a little bit of recency bias here, but I had, David Rubenstein and Harvey
Schwartz from Carlyle on last month’s, and we talked a lot about private credit
and sort of the, the relationship between, the traditional, you know, banks and
money center banks and the private credit players. And I'm curious how you
think you can benefit from the, the democratization of private assets, if you
will. And maybe as part of that, talk a little bit about any risks you might
see as part of the growth.

Jane Fraser

So one of the benefits is obviously for our wealth
franchise. We have very close relationships with a lot of the different players
in, in the wealth space, particularly the alternatives and the private asset,
because outside of the U.S., we've got a very high-end sophisticated client.
And we've got real depth and strength and history in Asia, Middle East, and
they are big buyers of the private asset market. And as you get a little lower
down, therefore the democratization becomes very helpful for them in being able
to participate. So that that for us in wealth, as we build out our investment
capabilities around the world and the, the offering, probably the opportunity
I'm most excited about is that playing together.

Then on the market side because, you know, supporting those
in the private asset space is a is an obvious big opportunity for us in sales
and trading. Then let's get to the banking side. So given the capital structure
and the capital requirements, even in a, as Scott Bessent puts it, let's take
some of the straitjacket off the banks. And a more level playing field.

Eric Veiel

One of the things that's interesting is you look at the
history of the U.S. large banks, they've, they have in the past worked together
at times. So the formation frankly, of the card companies, the rails that that
we all run on and that was originally from the banks. There's services like
Zelle that have been partnerships amongst the banks. Is there an avenue where
it's it's not each one creating their own, but, more the coalition?

Jane Fraser

Yes, there are in a number of areas, you know, I think there
is, particularly for the American banks. And I say this with sadness, as a
former European, that the U.S. banks are the dominant banks globally, and we do
the large the group of the large, the large banks, all of us feel a duty of
care to the global financial system. And we are always pushing for areas where
there can be utilities that are benefiting our clients to reduce down costs, or
to provide new services and capabilities that are better done together to serve
the industry and to do so safe, sound, not gouging on price, good fraud or
cyber or other capabilities behind it. What are the things that really, you
know, enable a client to go to bed at night and someone else is worrying it for
them. That's what we often do, and we have a number of different forums. We get
together, talk it through, and indeed with some of the regulators around the
world. So yes, there are there are forums, and we have active dialogs around
where it makes sense for us to collaborate as opposed to compete to the death.

Eric Veiel

Interesting. Well, we'll keep, keep our eyes open for that.
AI is obviously going to affect all of us in many, many ways, all of our
companies. As you're thinking about it from an internal perspective, executing
an AI plan or a strategy across Citi, how are you thinking about that and
what's the plan?

Jane Fraser

So we've got, we basically have three different types of
efforts going on. One is where we have a whole set of tools that is available
for the whole firm. I have 180,000 employees at the moment who have access to
what we call stylus, which then is a based off a one of the big, large language
models, and it will do summarization. So, for example, credit memos, one of the
greatest great hated things within it, within a corporate bank writing the
credit memo. We'll get the first draft written by our AI tool. Our teams will
go through, they'll fix things. They’ll  look at it. They'll make sure,
they’ll make adjustments, and then AI will come in at the end and will then
check that we have indeed complied with all the policies, legal requirements,
all the pieces like that. And it's submitted. That is taking hours off.

We had our strategy offsite for our board last week. The
first draft of the accompanying memos to the documentation was written by AI.
We had to go in, fix a number of errors, bits and pieces, and then they were
submitted. These are just little examples of the bottom, of helping people do
their job better and more easily. We got policy checking. Do you comply with
policy? We have an HR job policy tool. So that is in our AI toolkit. That is
also enabling people to come up with use-case ideas. That goes into the second
bucket where we have use-cases that we are then driving firm wide or in
individual businesses or functions. If you have a thousand flowers blooming,
you're likely to have a thousand flowers dead. So you choose which are the ones
that you go, okay, these are the ones that are worth, from a shareholder
perspective, pursuing, or regulatory, or client. And then you drive them at
scale through the firm. So those are the top-down use cases, some of which may
have bubbled up from the bottom-up ideas of our teams. And then across all of
that you've got all the coding that is getting ready.

Eric Veiel

Yeah. That's happening quickly across every company.

Jane Fraser

Then we come to agentic. And we use we've been using Devon
on agentic. It’s game, it's I think will be game changing. What it is enabling
us to do in coding because it then acts upon, it's not only giving you
information, but it then acts. That is, I can see how that's really going to
happen fast and change a lot of banking. And that's the area that I think we
all of us feel like we're just scratching the surface of what that can do and
will do. Really changing workflows, models, and how work gets done. It's
exciting and it's scary.

Eric Veiel

Yeah. It ties back, I think, a little bit to the beginning
of our conversation where we were talking about the, the labor market and sort
of the stagnation that's going on there, and it almost feels like there's a
little bit of a hesitancy for people to leave the workforce wondering, like,
will I be able to reengage because worrying a little bit about automation and
what's going to happen to their existing roles? And I think it's a little bit
on people in your seat and others hesitating to go make a bunch of new hires
because, well, maybe if I just hold off on filling that position, I'll figure
out a way to do it with agentic AI or something else.

Jane Fraser

It’s already started. But at the same time, there are new
things that are coming through. So there are new roles, there are new
opportunities. And I have to say, I think one of the benefits of being a larger
institution is for our talent we can offer them some of the flexibility. I
think, I was down at our Dallas site recently. I first started getting there 15
years ago. It was our default servicing center. It's probably 10,000 people
there. It morphed into being the credit card processing when the default servicing
changed. Then it became our commercial bank, had operations there. It then
became even heavier as a tech center. Then it became cyber. Other things coming
in. It's the joy of being a larger institution. People adapt. And so our,
talent and our people can have multiple careers within the Citi family. So I
think it will be very disruptive for a lot of jobs in the next three years. But
I also think there's going to be new ones that are going to be coming through.
So, the talent doesn't need to be as afraid in the larger organizations where
we'll train and get them redeployed, as opposed to others where you won't have
the same advantages because it is going to be very disruptive, and we've all
got to think about, we've got to reimagine. Everything that we do is changing.

Eric Veiel

Yes. And I think it's amazing to me, you know, having been,
newer in the workforce through the dot.com rise, this one feels different to me
in a much more tangible way, maybe it was just the ignorance of youth at the
time, and I thought I was, you know, indestructible or whatever, but this one
feels much different.

Jane Fraser

I think it's happening faster is the other piece. I think
that's where the worry sits for the labor market is it's happening faster.

Eric Veiel

That's very very fair. Let's pivot a little bit to, to
leadership in sort of your, your experiences there.

Jane Fraser

The scars on the arm.

Eric Veiel

There for sure. I’m sure we all have them. What's the thing
about being a CEO that people who are not in the role would have a hard time
appreciating?

Jane Fraser

The amount of stakeholder management, on your day. I had, I
had underappreciated how much of your time is spent doing that. We often talk
of the board. Well, there's no such thing as the board. It is, you know, 12, 13
highly talented individuals all with opinions, but there's not one. So, that,
that, getting the most from your board requires a lot of one-on-one
interactions and other pieces as well to help you. Obviously, there's media. If
I go down to Washington, it might be to see the White House, it might be to see
Treasury, it could be down to go and see, the global financial infrastructure
like World Bank, IMF etc. It could be going to see the different regulators we
have. It could be going to the Hill to see; there's a lot down in Washington
alone. And if you're global, you have the same in London, you have the same in
Frankfurt, you’ve got Singapore, you’ve got Hong Kong, and they all need a
relationship with you.

You obviously have the media. You've got your investors,
you've got your clients, you've got your employees, different activist groups,
things like that. So a huge amount of the time is for the CEO, to be, in front
of that group. And then the other piece is, there's a lot of decisions that
come down to you. The direction the, you know, if you're going to go a
particular piece, it, it is down to the CEO and you can get input from others,
but everyone else tends to have, to not be as objective. When you're the CEO,
you're very objective around the pieces. You're really thinking the whole
institution. You don't have a vested interest to a particular business or a
particular group. You see the whole picture and, it's one of is one of the
great joys of the job because you're very empowered. But you realize that,
yeah, a lot of it is up to you.

Eric Veiel

You mentioned, you know, using the board to, to help get the
most out of them. Who else do you use for guidance or to, or to help, you know,
think about hard decisions or, frankly, just to vent when something's, like,
frustrating you?

Jane Fraser

Yeah. I have a wonderful husband who has come from the
banking industry and, retired now, but that that is definitely helpful for some
of the venting. You know, internally there's a, you know, there's different
people have got different skill sets for different big issues that come up. So
you pull different groups of folk together. You know, our general counsel, our
HR head are often part of that. Or other times it might be, more of our control
head, risk head, others for things geopolitics coming up. Our head of
international war in Russia and Ukraine, it's a different group. So you pull on
that expertise. Externally, I have; other CEOs are always very helpful. Because
some of the issues, how have you dealt with X? How have you dealt with Y. So, a
Julie Sweet at Accenture, an Andy Jassy, or Satya (Nadella) - how are you
dealing with AI. Yeah, I've Greg Case is someone who I've known for many years
out at Aon. So, there’s a group of people whose judgment you find helpful, and
the phone a friend.

Eric Veiel

Right.

Jane Fraser

It is fellow CEOs, sometimes within the same industry.

Eric Veiel

Right.

Jane Fraser

And then you'll have other people who are just advisors.
You've known for you for a long time who you trust to be completely discreet,
and you need the truth tellers who don't have an agenda.

Eric Veiel

It's so funny you mentioned that. I was just in the office
of, of a colleague the other day, and I said to him, like, you've always been
my truth teller. Somebody I've worked with since the beginning of my time of T.
Rowe. It's really important to have those people who just. It doesn't matter,
they’ll tell you.

Jane Fraser

That's the advice as well, that, one of our board members,
Peter Henry, used to run this business school over at Stanford. Again now, and
he'd always had this big ears and thick skin and that listening. And he said,
look, every year you're the CEO, you'll have fewer and fewer people wanting to
tell you what's actually happening, and what's really going on. And you you
need to build different ears and listening skills. And he's right.

Eric Veiel

One of the things that you all have embarked on as part of
the strategic realignment of the company and really, you know, focusing in is
changing the incentives. So, I think you’ve driven more towards a return on
capital model for, for your people. Implementing something like that can be
really challenging and can have, you know, adverse selection risks where, you
know, you have to worry about losing your best people if they don't like the
the metrics that they're assigned. How did you go about implementing that, that
change?

Jane Fraser

Well, when you were trading where we were trading and you
had the return levels we had, it was, the why was blindingly obvious. So it
didn't it, you know, the cases to why was pretty obvious to everyone. If you're
then putting in more of a culture of accountability and of excellence and, and
an expectation with people they should be winning all the time. And there was
an intolerance of, of, losing, you keep the best people, so you, you don't have
an adverse selection issue. You have an adverse selection if you have, a
culture of mediocrity. If you have a culture of excellence and accountability
that some of the best people want to be in. Yeah. So actually, I found it was a
flip.

The other thing that was a help, on the reorg, I do believe
in transparency. And so, we gave a lot of transparency as the performance of
our five core businesses. And it's quite radical transparency for the street
versus what used to be, when we had almost more of a holding company mindset at
the top rather than an operator model. And for those businesses, it's those
business leaders. It's their reputation. Where they're standing, everyone can
see exactly how they're performing. And that level of transparency, I think is
also very valuable. So it's not just the returns as incentive, but, real
transparency and being being willing to, you know, put yourself on the hook on
that and then making sure your team feel that too. That's been an important
part of the mix. There is nowhere to hide.

Eric Veiel

What's the, what's the best advice you've been given since
you got into this role?

Jane Fraser

It definitely was the big ears and thick skinned one,
because there's a lot of resiliency. You have to, there's, it's also weird
because a lot of the, the naysayers, out of date with where you are. Now they
may still be naysayers in x time, but right now I'm doing a lot of work on
27/28 and what are the actions we got to do in the second half of this year?

Eric Veiel

Get past the way points.

Jane Fraser

Yeah, thinking about that because you're setting it up now
for the longer term. And the work we're doing at the same time of feeling the
pressure of delivering 25, and a lot of pressure on delivering 26, but what the
street or what media or other things they're reacting to stuff; the decisions
we made a year ago. And so you just have to, or they may not see all the pieces
as they're coming through. And there were a lot of, naysayers around -
 would Citi change? Would it be a new Citi? And, you know, it's been a lot
of work, and we tried to be very clear it would be multi year. This wasn't we
weren't going to take the easy path. This wasn't about makeup. This was
makeover not makeup.

Eric Veiel

That's a lot harder to do.

Jane Fraser

And it takes longer and it and it's and it's not as
transparent to everyone immediately; the divestitures were. So you, you just
have to make sure you stick to the plan. We have a vision. We have a strategy.
We put a lot of work into it, get it done and don't get deviated by noise. You
know, focus on the signal.

Eric Veiel

What advice do you give to, younger people, especially as
they're kind of starting out in their career and ask you, you know, like how
did you do it? What should I do?

Jane Fraser

Look, I think the world’s changed for younger folks and the
decades ago when I started, and I look at it with my, my own kids, I've got, a
son over at Morgan Stanley, and I've got another over in the tech world. And I
think the piece I think of them starting out, they, they're going to have
multiple careers in their life. They're going to have jobs that will no longer
be jobs in a number of year’s time. And so how to build the resiliency, how to
build what are the skill sets that are going to be important ones that give you
an ability to reinvent yourself. What are more of the, you no longer need to
know the answer, you just need to know what question to ask in an AI world and
ask it well. That's very different from the cramming I had to learn how to do.
You were probably the same way. You don’t need to know the answer. You're going
to need judgment. You're going to need a whole range of other things. So it's,
it's just, it's actually for the young kids now - dream is my advice. So
resiliency but dream, don't feel you've got to be pigeonholed into things
because there's so many pressures on the kids coming out of college.

Eric Veiel

Yeah. Well just the recruiting process. We were talking
about this.

Jane Fraser

Oh it's I mean, there's no way I would make it today. My
first job was in investment banking in M&A. Just, I can't imagine I would
have got that. But on the other hand, you look at the youth today, they're so
talented, they're so creative, much more entrepreneurial. So much more at their
fingertips. So how do you help them feel? A bit like the banks out of the
straitjacket and dream.

Eric Veiel

That's great. Maybe, just to wrap up, I'm curious, you know,
what do you do to when you try to get away from, from work and try to
decompress or unwind any hobbies that you that you're passionate about or?

Jane Fraser

I, I do I do love traveling. So for me, one of the great
joys of the world, because it's a job that's often seven days a week, by the
nature of it. And it's a privilege to have this job, like you do is utterly
extraordinary. What you learn, and what you get to see, problems you try and
solve. So you get a lot of energy from that. But you are always on. I love
being able to go, when I'm in different parts of the world, if you get the
Saturday off, go and explore, you know, a village somewhere, go for a hike in
the mountains, go and, you know, go and make the most of being somewhere. You
know, we, my husband and I are going to be. And, yeah, we we end up being in
all sorts of different places in Asia. And we always have the zombie day, which
is when you get there jet-lagged on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon,
you're like, oh my God, I got to adjust to the jet lag and be on on Monday
morning. And so we're always going to try and find, you know, a cute little
restaurant that's not some fancy schmancy, but somewhere you can have an
amazing sushi meal or a teppanyaki in Japan, or just go and explore the places
and enjoy seeing the cultures, that that's really wonderful.

Eric Veiel

That's amazing.

Jane Fraser

Yeah.

Eric Veiel

That's great. Well, Jane, thank you so much. This has been a
real pleasure to spend time with you. Super interesting, incredibly insightful,
and love to see Citi as a disrupter. Keep at it.

Jane Fraser

Will do.

Eric Veiel

Great, thank you.

Again, I’m Eric Veiel. Thank you for listening to The Angle.
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