Citi turns up the heat on wealth bankers as it races to close the gap with rivals

Citigroup has drastically raised performance targets for its private banking staff – in some cases requiring net revenue to double from a year earlier – as it pushes to accelerate a wealth business that has long trailed its largest US competitors.

As reported by the Financial Times, the revised benchmarks, set individually for each banker, center on net revenue and the value of investment assets clients entrust to the firm.

According to people familiar with the matter who spoke to the FT, the new targets have drawn internal resistance, with some staff wondering aloud whether the goals are realistic. Because the targets factor into performance reviews and year-end bonuses, the question is more than academic.

"It's just not even possible," one Citi banker told the Times of the targets that had been handed down.

Driving the push is Andy Sieg, who joined Citi in 2023 after serving as president of Bank of America's Merrill Lynch wealth management division. Since arriving, Sieg has reworked the private bank's compensation structure to emphasize asset gathering over loan sales – reflecting a broader industry view that recurring investment revenues are more valuable, and less risky, than lending income. Along those lines, Citi last year handed off roughly $80 billion in client assets to BlackRock to manage, Reuters reported, as part of a strategy to refocus its bankers on advice and financial planning.

A key measure for Sieg is net new investment assets – the difference between client inflows and outflows – which he has described as his "north star." That figure dropped by more than 50% year over year in the fourth quarter, underscoring the scale of the challenge.

Citi's private bank serves clients with a net worth of at least $10 million. Its broader wealth division, which also includes Citigold and a workplace banking unit, has been grappling with senior staff departures, sluggish client growth and the fallout from a now-concluded investigation into Sieg's management style.

Read more: Former Citigroup exec who hit bank with lawsuit slams industry’s gender-based ‘chasm of fairness’

A Citi spokesperson told the Financial Times that as "our private bank's performance has strengthened, expectations for colleagues have risen accordingly," adding that the firm evaluates staff on a range of factors, including "the value they deliver to clients and Citi."

The latest push comes ahead of an investor day in May, at which Chief Executive Jane Fraser is expected to update the market on the bank's ongoing restructuring. The pressure she's under to deliver for investors was clear in a January memo, where she told thousands of staff in no uncertain terms that "we are judged on our results."

Now, Citi is targeting returns on tangible common equity of 15% to 20% for this year, with a long-term goal of exceeding 20%.

The scale of the competitive gap is visible in the revenue figures: Citi's private bank generated $2.7 billion in 2025, up 12% from the prior year – while JPMorgan's private bank pulled in more than $12 billion after a 9% gain. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America hold similarly commanding leads.

Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo put the challenge bluntly in comments to the Financial Times: "The burden is on Citigroup to prove the strength of its wealth business line and show that the last quarter of a century of underperformance could change."

Much of that underperformance traces back to Citi's decision to sell its Smith Barney retail brokerage to Morgan Stanley in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis – a move that left the bank far behind peers as wealth management became an increasingly attractive business for large financial institutions.