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In CCAR-adjacent functions — processes subject to federal oversight and with direct implications for how a bank represents its financial stability to regulators — governance exists precisely because the stakes of getting it wrong extend beyond the institution to the broader financial system.

What happens when Citi leadership in those functions does not understand the governance framework they are responsible for overseeing? What happens when that risk leadership responds to legitimate compliance oversight not by engaging with the findings but by attempting to neutralize the people raising them — escalating politically to make procedural violations disappear, characterizing compliance partners as making mountains out of molehills, and leveraging seniority to override technical expertise?

In this particular case, it got documented by the function that was being overridden, resulting in formal findings. It fell to me to cure the problem while the leadership responsible for creating it faced no accountability whatsoever. My position was later eliminated, framed as organizational simplification.

In a public team meeting, the MD — someone with a minimum of 3 bullying and discrimination cases in the last 2 years alone — made the culture explicit: what’s right for the company means doing what you’re told. Her Director functioned as an extension of whoever held authority at the moment — never pushing back, never fighting for what was right, managing tasks instead of managing risk. In a function where independent judgment is the entire point, he had none and his role was expanded in reward.

Ironically, that same MD that could not articulate the governance framework they were responsible for overseeing has been positioning AI as a workforce replacement strategy — going so far as to threaten part of her team with redundancy on the grounds that they added no value. A claim she would struggle to substantiate, having never articulated their mandate in the first place.

Like most of her behaviors and statements, this was done in pursuit of alignment with her now-CFO patron’s agenda, rather than any genuine duty of care for the function she was leading.

There is a certain irony in middle management championing AI as a workforce reduction tool. Replacing human judgment with AI requires understanding what good judgment looks like in the first place. AI will indeed displace roles — starting, perhaps, with those that add no independent judgment, no technical vision, and no accountability. The value chain of management is about to be stress-tested in ways that org charts cannot protect against.

When the people who fix problems are eliminated and the people who created them are retained, regulators should take a deeper look at what is being presented.