Citi's Focus On SMEs Will Break Into Local Banks' Turf

THE new head of Citi Singapore outlined his plans for the local operations of the global financial group yesterday.

Managing wealth: Mr Gupta (from left) with Lui Tuck Yew and Lee Sing Kong at the Citi-NIE event yesterday

Piyush Gupta said that Citi is looking to capitalise on Singapore's high growth rate of 7-8 per cent and wants to build specific parts of its business.

'We're looking to boost our wealth management and wealth services team,' he said, without giving staff figures and targets. He also pointed to the small and medium enterprise (SME) segment as an area Citi wants to focus on. 'We want to help Singapore companies go overseas,' he said.

Mr Gupta, who took over as country head from Catherine Weir about two months ago, made the comments on the sidelines of the launch of the Citi-NIE Financial Literacy Hub for Teachers yesterday.

Citi has been making inroads into the local banks' turf, muscling in on the mass market by setting up branches in the HDB heartland and tying up with SMRT to offer linked credit cards, and opening branches and ATMs at rail stations.

Focusing on the SME segment will mean breaking into what had been the preserve of the three local banks.

Separately, Mr Gupta said that the impact of losses arising from collateralised debt obligation (CDOs) was 'marginal' for Citi's Singapore operations.

US-based Citigroup reported a 57 per cent drop in net income to US$2.38 billion this month on the back of losses of just under US$6 billion, including US$3 billion due to bad sub-prime mortgage bets and tighter credit market conditions.

At the launch of the Citi-NIE Financial Literacy Hub for Teachers, Citi pledged $795,000 over two years to train teachers to deliver financial literacy lessons.

Spearheaded by the National Institute of Education (NIE), the programme is expected to train about 500 secondary school teachers over the next 18 months.