Citi lifted the veil on its complex data issues & the staff needed to fix them
Citi has a data problem, and it's one that's looking quite costly. The bank recently received a $135m fine for, among other things, data governance issues, and is creating a "resource review plan" to fix them. In its Q2 earnings call, CEO Jane Fraser and CFO Mark Mason revealed just how complex data at Citi is, and therefore just how much of a spanner in the works data governance problems can be.
Mason said Citi has 11,000 total regulatory reports that can each be massive; he highlighted one in particular - the 2052a liquidity report, which "has 750,000 lines of data." Mason also noted the importance of "doing it efficiently [so] that it doesn't take thousands of people to reconcile that information." The good news is that only 30 of the 11,000 are directly relevant to its U.S. regulators, however, and Mason said the bank is "prioritizing data that impacts" those.
It seems that one of the biggest issues for data governance is when data comes from a variety of sources and platforms, each of which formats it a different way. This is something Citi has taken significant steps to fix already. Mason said various functions have been reduced to one platform from many, including equities execution, reporting ledgers and sanctioning. Overall, Mason says "platforms are down some 300" at the bank."
Not all functions have been streamlined, though. Mason said the bank's corporate loan platforms have been significantly reduced from 39 to "south of 20", but compared to other functions, it seems to have a long way to go. Fraser noted that the bank is still busy implementing a "standardized reporting infrastructure." We've noted in the past that transformation staff involved in these mass migrations may find themselves surplus to requirements once the job is finished. However, in the short term, their role at Citi looks to be quite secure.
Finishing the job is proving costlier than once thought for Citi. Mason said Citi is "having to spend more, some $250 million or so more" on the transformation. Fraser says that some of that $250m will be spent on "adding resources and data experts."
Citi currently has 121 open roles in its data governance division. A data integration principle in New York, for example, can earn a salary of up to $300k at director level.
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