Citigroup cuts hundreds of jobs weeks after JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs announce layoffs

The cuts amount to less than 1% of Citigroup’s 240,000-person workforce, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing personnel information. Staffers across the firm’s operations and technology organization and US mortgage-underwriting arm are also among those affected.

The routine cuts are part of Citigroup’s normal business planning, the people said. There’s been no broad mandate for managers to cut staffers; instead, various divisions have been grappling with different reasons for the cuts. 

A spokeswoman for Citigroup declined to comment. 

The move comes just weeks after rival JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut hundreds of mortgage employees. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., for its part, embarked on one of its biggest rounds of job cuts ever in January when it planned to eliminate thousands of positions across the company. 

In the technology division, Citigroup has spent billions in recent years upgrading its underlying infrastructure. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser has long said those investments would ultimately allow the bank to reduce its reliance on manual processes. 

“As our investment in transformation and control initiatives mature, we expect to realize efficiency as those programs transition from manually intensive processes to technology-enabled ones,” Fraser said in January. Play Video

In investment banking, on the other hand, the firm is grappling with an industrywide slowdown in deals. The dearth of activity sparked a 53% drop in revenue from the business last year and analysts are expecting additional declines in the first quarter. 

Citigroup’s recent moves in its mortgage division — which is largely based in O’Fallon, Missouri — come after the bank already dismissed dozens of staffers last year. Mortgage demand has dropped in recent months amid rising prices and a rapid increase in mortgage rates. 

“We’re actively hiring to execute against our strategy, but we’re also re-pacing where that makes sense in light of the environment that we’re in,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason said in January. “We’re constantly combing talent and making sure we’ve got the right people in the right roles, and, where necessary to restructure, we do that as well.”

Amid the cuts, Citigroup continues to hire and build teams dedicated to resolve a pair of consent orders received in 2020 from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve. Those additions helped swell firmwide headcount by 30,000 in the last two years alone. 

“We continue to invest in our transformation to address our consent orders and to modernize our bank,” Fraser said in January. “We’re streamlining our processes and making them more automated, whilst improving the quality and accessibility of our data. This will make us a better bank.”

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