Citibank Group had recently announced that it will quit the Malaysia consumer banking market, along with 12 other markets spread across the world.
While this may cause panic for its customers, Citibank Malaysia had reassured its customers that there would be no changes to its consumer banking operations for now.
CEO of Citibank Group, Jane Fraser said that this move is part of an ongoing strategic review and they have to double down on wealth by directing investments and resources to the businesses where it has the greatest scale and growth potential.
However, Citibank will continue to operate its other units, like private and investment banking, in these countries.
According to the NST, Citi Malaysia CEO Usman Ahmed said the move doesn’t dilute the firm’s long-term commitment to Malaysia or the Asia-Pacific region. He said that the Citi Solutions Centers in Kuala Lumpur and Penang will remain an equally important operations hub for Citibank Group, from where we execute millions of financial transactions worth over US$29 trillion annually for over 50 countries across the globe.
Despite that, there will be no immediate change to the bank’s operations, and there is no immediate impact to the employees as a result of today’s announcement by Citibank Group to pursue an exit from the consumer bank business in Malaysia.
Citigroup had reported revenues from retail banking in Asia dropped 9% compared to the first quarter of 2020, despite that the group as a whole reported profits.
According to Bloomberg, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser observed that the company’s resources “are better deployed against higher returning opportunities in wealth management and our institutional businesses in Asia.”
There’s no need to panic if you are a customer of Citibank, they will be a slow transition in the operations, whereby it could potentially be taken over by another bank.
