Citigroup chief financial officer Mark Mason today told an audience of about 300 people gathered at the Conrad Hotel in New York why the bank was having trouble complying with demands by regulators imposed as part of a $400 million settlement in 2021 related to poor risk management practices.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference, Mason told the bank’s managing director of equity research, Richard Ramsden, that a hodgepodge of internal systems that were “never fully integrated” have made it more difficult than expected to file required reports with regulators about how his bank is used.
“We have been working at not just what’s expected of us from the consent order, but a broader operational overhaul across the entire company,” said Mason. “But as everyone would have seen, there are other areas where we’re not as far along as we’d like.”
Mason’s address today follows October 2020 cease-and-desist orders against Citigroup by the OCC and the Federal Reserve, which found that the bank failed to implement and maintain a risk management program, internal controls, or data governance suitable for the bank’s size, complexity, and risk profile and ordering it to enhance its controls.
After four years of working to satisfy the demands, the OCC this summer determined Citi had failed to meet the milestones, assessing an additional $75 million civil money penalty. The Federal Reserve similarly determined Citi had made “insufficient progress remediating its problems,” levying an additional $60 million fine.
As a result of the difficulties, Mason said the bank is shifting from a focus on improving the data on a product-by-product basis to a more comprehensive report-driven focus. “Essentially, the ask here is around, how do we improve the output of those reports? Ensuring that the intake of the critical data elements is done with a lens of what’s required.”
Despite the reporting problems, Citigroup maintained a mostly successful third quarter, reporting net income of $3.2 billion, or $1.51 per diluted share, on revenues of $20.3 billion. Citi’s stock is up 38% on the year to $72, less than the 39% increase of the Dow Jones Banks index that tracks the American banking sector generally speaking.
The youngest of the top five U.S. banks, Citigroup was founded in 1998 from the $70 billion merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group. Over the next two decades, Citi grew in large part through shrewd acquisitions, most notably the 2000 purchase of Associates First Capital Corporation for $31 billion, as well as the 2001 acquisitions of Banamex for $12.5 billion and the European American Bank for $1.9 billion.
Last quarter Citi gave a full-year revenue target of $80 billion to $81 billion, which Mason told the Goldman audience they’ll likely be on the higher end of, with expenses also expected to come in on the high side of the $53.5 billion and $53.8 billion guidance, not counting the penalties.
“We’re still working to figure out if we can cover the civil money penalty,” said Mason. “But no change as it relates to the expense guide.”
