Story 219

I don’t work at Citi but as a senior woman working in Financial Services for over 25+ years, I have been horrified by the stories I have read on this platform and send solidarity and strength to the brave women sharing their stories.

If anyone ever needed a window into the beliefs and behaviour driving Citi’s atrocious culture issues documented with such clarity on this platform then you just need to read Jane Fraser’s 2025 shareholder letter. This is a letter written almost entirely through the lens of capital, markets and institutional positioning. The human dimension — the people inside the firm, the conduct culture, the long-term relationship with clients as partners rather than revenue sources, and the firm’s role in the broader society — are essentially absent. There is nothing on financial inclusion, community development, or Citi’s broader societal role which is quite shocking really given Citi’s exposure to consumer-facing businesses.

Transformation is discussed extensively but framed entirely as an internal efficiency story. Mentions of employees and talent are conspicuously absent in Jane’s letter. While I don’t always agree with Jamie Dimon, his reflections on the criticality of his workforce in his own 2025 letter to shareholders is significant by comparison:

“We know the foundation of our success rests with our people. They are the front line, both individually and as teams, serving our customers and communities, building the technology, making the strategic decisions, managing the risks, determining our investments and driving innovation. However you view the world — its complexities, risks and opportunities — a company’s prosperity requires a great team of people with guts, brains, integrity, enormous capabilities and high standards of professional excellence to ensure its ongoing success”.

In Fraser’s letter there is exactly one passing reference to “talent” in the entire letter, buried in a list alongside technology and client capabilities as things the firm is “reinvesting” in. There is no discussion of culture, employee engagement, leadership development, workforce wellbeing, retention, hiring strategy, or what it means to work at Citi. The workforce is treated almost entirely as an operational input rather than a strategic asset.

The AI section doubles down on this perspective – employees are mentioned only as recipients of “proprietary AI tools”. The implicit framing is that people are a cost to be optimized, not a capability to be invested in.

For a letter that spends considerable space on transformation, risk management and clarified accountability, the complete absence of any reference to conduct standards, ethics, or behavioural expectations is shocking given Citi’s current issues with NFM, where you might expect the annual letter to cover what good conduct looks like and why it matters.

Jane Frasers’s letter might tell a coherent macro-to-Citi narrative about geopolitical complexity but I hope it also serves as a crucial piece of structural evidence for all those seeking justice in their treatment by Citi and to all those who should be holding their leadership to account including the media. To my mind, the letter exposes a breathtaking arrogance and lack of care or a complete absence of understanding of fiduciary leadership responsibility or both.