As more and more fintechs disrupt the traditional banking sector, Citi is looking to embrace the new technological advances to ensure they stay relevant; the bank formed a Citi fintech division in November 2015 and stocked it with former employees of Amazon and PayPal; Citi is looking to launch a new version of their mobile app that will include voice and facial recognition to eliminate password entry; Stephen Bird, Citigroup's CEO of global consumer banking, recently told Fortune magazine, "what happens in an extinction phase is that you either rapidly adapt and new means of competition are created, or you go extinct."; the bank is looking to continue making advancements to keep up with industry tech trends. Source
Citigroup will provide funding for mortgages which will eventually be securitized and sold; the terms of the deal were not disclosed; LendInvest has continued to grow loan volumes with 2017 volume at 500 million pounds. Source
In this week’s PeerIQ Weekly Update the company covers the recent spate of bank earning reports, securitization news and issues another round of hiring updates; banks have seen a continued drop in fixed income and commodities trading revenue, picking up the slack has been lending and wealth management; Citigroup and Morgan Stanley had strong reports while Goldman Sachs and American Express missed the mark; SoFi is issuing a $720mn securitization deal, Moody’s rated the A classes AAA; PeerIQ also lists five new hires stemming from the $12mn round last summer. Source.
John Gerspach, Chief Financial Officer of Citigroup stated at an investor conference they are building the foundation which will support the launch of a national digital consumer bank launch in the next three years; the bank currently has around 700 bank branches which is far fewer than the three biggest banks. Source
The former Citigroup CEO is investing $100 million in Fair Square Financial LLC through his investment firm called Orogen Group;...
Citigroup has a new small business loan offering offered through a branded partnership with Biz2Credit; the partnership follows new small business offerings from JPMorgan and Wells Fargo; Rohit Arora from Biz2Credit said the partnership has not been widely publicized because it is in very early stages; small business lenders use a website interface managed by Biz2Credit that submits their information to a Citigroup banker for follow up; Arora also said the new small business loan offering is part of the bank's Community Reinvestment Act obligations. Source
Citigroup led the $20 million round and the company is now worth $200 million; Citigroup plans to use the startup’s technology which uses natural language processing to improve customer interactions; the software converts audio conversations into text and then uses sentient analysis algorithms to detect questions, and whether it was a positive or negative interaction; it also works to determine bearish and bullish markets for traders. Source
Pagaya is an asset manager based in New York; they announced that they have received $75 million in debt financing from Citi; the funds will be used for its Opportunity Fund to invest in loans by online lenders such as Prosper and LendingClub; the company uses machine learning to determine loans worthy of investment. Source
Citigroup has shrunk its retail banking business over the years, but is now looking to become a national player; they plan to do this by expanding mobile app features to serve new customers wherever they live; the app will include banking, credit card, lending, investment tools and account aggregation; Citigroup has invested three years into their digital plans and also has plans for a roboadvisor within the app Source
More than $445bn was lost to cyber crime last year, a 30 percent increase from three years earlier; banks have...