Citigroup or Citi is an American multinational investment bank and financial services provider, headquartered in New York City serving millions of consumers, businesses, and institutions across 160 countries and jurisdictions. Jane Fraser is the current CEO of Citigroup since March 2021. She is the first woman to become CEO of a multinational bank in the history of Citigroup. Wondering what is so inspiring about Jane Fraser? Here is the story!
Her Education
Jane Fraser was born in Scotland in 1967. She studied at Girton College in Cambridge from 1985 to 1988 for graduation in BA and Economics. She first moved to Australia for high school with the thought of being a Doctor but later she realized that she was bad at Biology but very fond of Math and Economics and chose to make her career in Banking. After her graduation, she worked in Goldman Sachs in London at the age of 20. Later she decided to go to Harvard Business School for MBA and got her MBA degree in 1994.
Her Family and Career
In 1994 Jane Fraser joined McKinsey & Company, working in financial services and global strategy, eventually rising to partner. She got married and in the same year was pregnant. The firm informed her she’d be made a partner two weeks after she gave birth. People gave her many advice- That Don’t get pregnant in your partnership years and all. But she remembered one advice she got from one of her mentors that you are going to have many careers in your life and they are going to be measured in decades. So why are you trying to have everything at the same time, Why the sense of rush?
She spent 10 years at McKinsey and decided to be a part-time partner for the remaining five years until she left McKinsey, to spend more time with her young kids. She believed that you can’t do everything at your comfort level. You learn to do things at 80% and after having kids life taught her balance. At first, it was hard for her to step back and work part-time but when she did this she was happy balancing both her professional and personal life. She said that you can have it all in life but not all at once!
"There's Always A Scope Of Improvement"
Her Career at Citigroup
At first, she was uncomfortable taking the job at Citigroup at the beginning of financial crises as she was not sure that she could do it but then took a friend’s advice to overcome the fear of failure. She joined Citigroup in 2004 as the head of the client strategy in the bank’s investment and corporate banking division in London. Over the next 16 years, she took a lot of different jobs at Citigroup that taught her different aspects of the business and got opportunities to build business relationships and a great reputation within the firm.
In 2017 when Maria hit Puerto Rico, downing power lights and flooding the territory, due to which Citigroup’s San Juan branch was forced to close. Fraser provided the bank employees with generators, solar cellphone chargers, portable septic systems, water, and other necessities at lightning speed, allowing them to reopen the branch a week after the storm. It was the only bank that was up and running which led companies like Walmart, Shell, and other big clients of Citi to restart their operations. She said that we don’t leave a country when it is in a bad shape.
In 2021 she became CEO of Citigroup. After becoming CEO in just 46 days she decided to close its13 retail banking operations in different countries. The countries are Australia, Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. This was a very big step taken by the bank. She said that the 13 markets have an excellent business but not in the scale they need to compete. She said that “We believe our capital, investment dollars, and other resources are better deployed against higher returning opportunities in wealth management and our institutional businesses in Asia.”
