To gain wallet share, Citi to add 400 U.S. advisors and personal bankers

Citi plans to add more than 400 advisors and personal bankers to its U.S. branches and Citigold unit for wealthy clients, even as it rolls out an AI financial planner this summer.

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In his first-ever presentation at Citi’s annual investor day in New York, wealth head Andy Sieg said Thursday that Citi’s biggest opportunity to manage more of current clients’ assets lies in its U.S. retail bank, which the firm moved into its wealth division last year. The bank is at the center of Citi’s plans to manage more of its clients’ money, Sieg said, estimating its U.S. banking customers now hold $3 trillion at other institutions.

Like many firms offering a wide variety of financial services, Citi tries to entice clients who come in for one particular reason to also do business with its other divisions. Among other benefits, firms with multiple relationships are less likely to see clients go elsewhere for services.

Of the firm’s hiring plans, Sieg said, “We’re elevating service quality and expanding client coverage. We’ll add over 400 client advisors and personal bankers. More advisors means deeper relationships and more investment conversations.”

Citi now has roughly 2,300 advisors globally. The firm does not break out how many are based in the U.S.

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Even as Citi looks to add to its human workforce, it’s moving in the same direction as many wealth managers by looking to do more with artificial intelligence. Sieg said the firm plans this summer to begin offering a new AI wealth advisor known as Citi Sky to its Citigold clients, who must have at least $200,000 in investable assets.

Sieg showed a demonstration in which the AI assistant, appearing on screen as a young woman, provided various investment-related prompts and answers. In one example, the AI tells hypothetical clients that a certificate of deposit is due to mature next week. In another, it responds to a supposed drop in the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate by saying, “This has potential implications for your mortgage refinancing opportunities.”

Only after those prompts does the AI pause in the presentation to ask, “Would you like to review your options or schedule an appointment with your advisor?”

Wealth managers generally say AI won’t replace advisors but rather supplement what they can do by giving them more time to work directly with clients on complicated tasks that aren’t easily automated. Last month Citi went to Google’s annual conference — Citi Sky was built using Google’s Gemini AI technology and cloud computing — to present the new AI assistant to the 32,000 people in attendance, Sieg said.

The general response, he said, was that it “will change my financial life by giving me the opportunity to think and ask questions about my finances when I have the time, not just when banks are open.”

“They see this as a new chance,” Sieg said about investors. “It is a major opportunity for us to help them, and it is a force multiplier for our business and our advisors.”

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With $5 trillion held elsewhere, Sieg says ‘we have the clients’

But more than technology, Sieg has staked the future of Citi’s wealth unit on its ability to increase its wallet share with current clients — or manage more of the assets they now hold at other institutions. He has previously estimated that, globally, Citi clients hold $5 trillion elsewhere (including the $3 trillion held by U.S. banking customers). For its own holdings, Citi’s wealth unit reported $1.3 trillion in total client balances, which takes in not only investments but also deposits and loans.

“We have the clients,” Sieg said Thursday. “Our challenge is to deepen the relationship by showing them what’s possible when they trust more of their financial life to Citi.”

Since being hired by Citi in 2023 from Bank of America’s Merrill, where he had been president, Sieg has made bringing in new client assets the wealth unit’s top goal. At the investor day event, he reported progress toward that “North Star,” saying $90 billion in net new flows have come in the past two years. In 2025, roughly $13 billion came from referrals from the firm’s banking and other business units.

Alongside the U.S. hiring plans, Sieg said Citi wants to add roughly 100 employees to its global private bank. The bank, which works with wealth clients, now has 400 bankers and 200 investment counselors throughout the world.

Sieg said the private bank has a distinct advantage in working with affluent international families. He said its clients have $400 million in investable assets on average.

“Now that could be a family that made its fortune in Hong Kong, has children living in the U.S., runs a business in Dubai, and maybe today is buying real estate in Portugal,” Sieg said. “For clients like this, our private bank isn’t just a good option. Quite often, we’re the only bank that can provide seamless global coverage and solutions across this range of needs.”

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Citi’s hiring plans to center on six key markets

In the U.S., Citi has roughly 650 banking branches in or near six cities: New York, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Citi announced plans in late 2024 to get advisors into 75% of what it deemed its “high opportunity branches.”

A Citi spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about whether the firm plans to bring in 400 additional client advisors and personal bankers through recruiting or other means.

Beyond hiring, Sieg said Citi plans to invest in its U.S. retail bank by refreshing its branches and investing in “next-gen teller and workstation technology.” It will also put money into online banking and investment offerings and hire 200 small-business advisors, he said.

“You’ll see a dramatically increased focus on small businesses, the economic bedrock of the communities we serve and where Citi’s commercial bona fides hold very special appeal,” Sieg said.

Citi CEO Jane Fraser hired Sieg from Merrill as part of her plans to overhaul the firm, long a laggard among global banks. On Thursday, she expressed confidence in the direction Sieg is taking Citi’s wealth management division.

Like Sieg, she said her priority is to get existing Citi clients to entrust the firm with more of the trillions they now hold elsewhere.

“And we are confident that we can capture it organically,” Fraser said. “We will steadily scale by continuing to invest in advisors’ data and technology, including AI to improve productivity and client outcomes.”

Sieg: We’re ‘midway’ to what a strong wealth business should be

Sieg’s time at Citi has come with some controversy and legal difficulties. Bloomberg reported in August that Citi had retained the outside law firm Paul Weiss to look into alleged instances of misbehavior by Sieg, including expletive-filled rants and his treatment of former private banking head Ida Liu, who now leads HSBC’s global private bank.

After Citi executives reviewed Paul Weiss’ report and concluded there was nothing to act on, the firm was slammed with a sex and racial discrimination suit by its former global head of platform and experiences Julia Carreon, who also accused Sieg of sexual harassment. Citi responded with a lawsuit, calling the charges baseless.

Such legal wranglings were nowhere in sight Thursday as Sieg ticked off a list of the wealth division’s recent accomplishments. The division’s revenues were up by roughly 16% last year to $11.3 billion. From 2022 to last year, the investment revenue its advisors produced on average rocketed from $861,000 to nearly $1.4 million.

And its efficiency ratio — the percentage of revenue eaten up by expenses — fell to 84% last year from 95% in 2022. The wealth division has moved to control costs by reducing its workforce by roughly 20% and abandoning its previous trust and proprietary asset management businesses and other distractions from its main goals.

Despite those signs of progress, Sieg said, “Candidly, we’re only about midway to what a strong wealth business should look like.”

Sieg said he and Fraser are impatient to make Citi’s wealth business one of the largest in the world. He said they’re proud the wealth unit is starting to produce the “kind of returns that shareholders expect from this type of business.”