Dive Brief:
- Citigroup deployed a pair of AI-powered advisory platforms in its wealth advisory division, according to a Monday announcement. The platforms were developed in-house by the bank’s data, analytics and innovation, wealth technology, and platform and experience teams, Citi’s Head of Wealth Andy Sieg said in the announcement.
- The AskWealth generative AI assistant provides advisory teams with market insights and research to quickly answer client questions, the bank said. It will be joined by the machine learning-based markets Advisor Insights, a markets update dashboard currently in the pilot phase.
- Citi is leveraging AI to speed processes and improve customer experience, according to Joe Bonanno, head of data, analytics and innovation at Citi. “These platforms will save hours of time for our advisors, bankers and service teams while reinforcing for clients the personal and high-touch experience that is a tradition at our firm,” he said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
Banks have seen the potential business value of AI technologies and are racing to bring use cases into production. Executives at several major banks, including Citi, have touted significant productivity gains from AI deployments in software development, knowledge management and front-office operations.
Citi’s latest AI deployments went from concept to full development in just six months, Bonanno told CIO Dive Tuesday via email. AskWealth is currently powered by Meta’s Llama large language model suite but will shift to Google’s Gemini over the next couple months, he said.
Generative AI will soon be embedded in Advisor Insights, as well. “We are already advancing work on an LLM backbone that will take the platform to the next level of intelligence and personalization,” Bonanno said.
The bank has made AI a priority as it continues a multiyear modernization push sparked by what CEO Jane Fraser characterized as “decades of underinvestment in large parts of Citi’s infrastructure” during a July 2024 earnings call. The bank absorbed $135.6 million in regulatory fines last year after being cited by the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for data quality deficiencies in 2020.
Citi’s tech rebound has been swift. At the start of the year, Fraser announced that 30,000 of the bank’s developers were using AI coding tools as it continued to pour billions into transformation initiatives. In June, Citi executives cataloged a number of other AI adoption accomplishments, including the Citi Stylus document intelligence tool and Citi Assist knowledge management assistant.
“We see opportunities to expand Gen AI across other areas of the firm such as fraud prevention in U.S. Personal Banking, confirmation matching in Markets and more,” the bank’s executive management team said in a memo to colleagues. “We’re adopting Gen AI at super speed and partnering with some of the best technology companies in the world to make it happen.”
