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Citi CEO Jane Fraser on the next phase of her turnaround: To be the best, Citi has to beat the best

By TheFinanceBase Team 4 min read

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Jane Fraser says Citigroup’s turnaround has entered a new phase. After the hardest restructuring work, the bank must now deliver excellence in each of its businesses—her shorthand is that Citi must “beat the best” if it wants to be the best. That means proving its simpler organization, expense reductions and technology investments produce stronger businesses, while keeping risk controls and customer trust moving as quickly as innovation.

What Fraser means by the “next phase”

Fraser became Citi’s chief executive in 2021 and initially focused on a broad repair of the bank. She reorganized Citi around five core businesses, reduced management layers and began withdrawing from consumer banking in 14 markets outside the United States. The strategy is intended to make the institution easier to manage and to concentrate capital and attention on businesses where it can compete effectively.

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That structural work is not the same as completing the turnaround. Fraser’s new instruction is performance-oriented: each remaining business has to match or exceed the strongest competitors in its market. She described the shift as “that mindset of excellence,” rather than another round of organizational redesign.

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What has changed at Citi since 2021

Turnaround action Scope or timing What it is meant to achieve
Five-business organization Implemented under Fraser’s leadership Fewer overlapping structures and clearer accountability
Management-layer reductions Implemented as part of the reorganization Shorter decision paths and lower overhead
Consumer-banking exits Exits begun in 14 markets outside the United States Concentrate resources on businesses and geographies Citi intends to keep
Workforce reduction 20,000 positions planned for elimination, with completion expected before 2027 Lower expenses; this is a target, not a completed result

The scale of the cuts matters for interpreting the strategy. The 20,000 figure is a planned reduction reported by Fortune on October 14, 2026, not evidence that all of those jobs have already disappeared. Expense execution will therefore remain an important test of whether the announced simplification delivers its promised benefits.

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How “beat the best” changes the scorecard

The next phase requires more than a smaller cost base. Citi will need to show that its businesses are improving relative to leading competitors in several measurable areas:

  • Organizational simplicity: fewer layers should translate into faster decisions and clearer ownership, not merely a new chart.
  • Revenue and returns: growth and returns on capital must improve alongside expenses. Fortune reported Citi’s best third-quarter revenue in a decade, but did not provide a dollar amount, so that statement cannot be used to calculate a growth rate or profitability result.
  • Execution of exits and savings: the 14 international consumer-market exits and 20,000-position target must be completed without disrupting customers or weakening controls.
  • Business-level competitiveness: each of the five core businesses must identify the peers it intends to outperform and the service, growth, productivity and risk measures that demonstrate it.

In practical terms, “beat the best” is a demand for relative performance. A bank can be smaller and still fall short if competitors deliver better client service, technology, revenue quality or risk outcomes.

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Where artificial intelligence fits

Fraser frames AI as a three-part opportunity for Citi: earn money, save money and secure the bank. The first two involve better products, employee productivity and lower operating costs; the third includes detecting threats and strengthening defenses.

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Current deployment and training

Citi is testing an AI avatar for its wealth business, developed with help from Google DeepMind. The project demonstrates that the bank is moving beyond experiments toward customer-facing or adviser-facing applications. It does not, by itself, establish revenue, adoption, productivity or job-substitution results.

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The bank also requires AI training for 175,000 employees, with an emphasis on writing effective prompts. That scale makes workforce fluency part of the operating model rather than a specialist program. Training, however, is an input; it does not prove that every employee will use AI productively or safely.

Will AI reduce Citi’s headcount?

Fraser’s answer is unresolved: “Honestly, we don’t know yet.” The uncertainty is significant because Citi is simultaneously pursuing a planned 20,000-position reduction and rolling out AI training. Some roles may become more productive, some work may be redesigned and some activities may be automated, but the available statements do not quantify how much of the planned reduction—if any—will be caused by AI.

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Fraser also said, “I never think people perform well if they’re fearful.” That suggests Citi’s implementation challenge is managerial as well as technical: employees need clear expectations about how tools change their work, safeguards for sensitive information and training that supports responsible use.

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How Citi is balancing speed with trust and cybersecurity

Fraser’s operating rule is that innovation and risk management must move at the same speed. “When you’re innovating at speed, you have to manage risk at the same speed,” she said. For a bank, that includes model validation, data protection, operational resilience, regulatory compliance and controls over AI-generated outputs.

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She also argues that cyber defense is a collective problem: “You don’t compete on cyber. You collaborate on cyber.” The implication is that Citi should share defensive intelligence and coordinate with other institutions rather than treat cybersecurity capabilities as a conventional competitive differentiator. Fast product launches without equally fast testing and monitoring would conflict with the standard Fraser has set.

What to watch before calling the turnaround successful

  1. Completion of the restructuring: whether the announced exits and management changes are carried out before the stated deadlines without service or control failures.
  2. Delivery of the workforce plan: whether the 20,000 planned reductions occur before 2027 and whether savings appear in actual expenses rather than only in forecasts.
  3. Quality of growth: whether revenue and returns improve across the five businesses, not just in a single quarter or segment.
  4. AI evidence: measurable productivity, customer or security benefits from deployed tools, including the wealth avatar, rather than pilot announcements alone.
  5. Risk performance: whether model, cyber and operational controls keep pace with new technology and remain trusted by regulators, employees and customers.

Fraser’s formulation therefore sets a demanding second test for Citi. The first was to simplify and stabilize the bank; the next is to demonstrate that the resulting businesses can outperform their strongest rivals without sacrificing control or trust.

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