Citigroup expands Asia digital in bid to reach affluent clients

(June 8): Citigroup Inc. is expanding its digital-banking channels in Asia as the bank seeks to boost its base of affluent customers in the region by at least 10% this year.

The New York-based firm is accelerating the deployment of technologies that allow customers to get advice from wealth managers and make transactions through its Internet and mobile platforms, according to Gonzalo Luchetti, Citigroup’s Singapore-based head of Asia-Pacific retail banking. The retail division currently has about 400,000 affluent clients in Asia, with assets ranging from US$100,000 to US$10 million ($138,128 to $13.8 million).

“The objective is to continue to bring consistent client-led growth to our business over the next few quarters,” Luchetti said in a May interview in Hong Kong. “We have to keep growing clients the way we have over the last 12 months when we started this transformation,” with digital banking driving the wealth-management business, he said, adding that growth in that period was “in a solid double-digit range.”

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