Citigroup today announced a multi-year strategic partnership that will see the bank move part of its vast financial infrastructure to a platform hosted by Alphabet subsidiary Google Cloud. New York-based Citi, the fourth-largest U.S. bank by assets, now relies heavily on hardware. Integration with virtual environments is expected to make it easier to customize financial pipelines and respond to consumers’ ever-changing needs.
As part of the partnership, Balaji Kumar, Head of Global Technology Infrastructure at Citi, said: luck The bank will also use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to build a range of financial tools for customers using artificial intelligence. No details have been released about which applications will launch first, but Kumar said “quite a few” pilots are already in the works.
“This is a huge opportunity to participate in technological modernization,” says Kumar. The infrastructure upgrades are part of Citi’s larger effort to better leverage the bank’s financial pipes, which drive a significant portion of the global economy and account for half of the bank’s profits.
Rohit Bhat, managing director of Google Cloud’s financial services division, said that although the partnership is still in its early stages, Google Cloud’s engineering, product and sales teams have been working with Citi’s technology and business support teams for several months and have leveraged much of their technology. said. They co-developed it and it was quite mature.
The most important of Citi’s Google Cloud upgrades is its high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities, which run millions of risk calculations every day for Citi’s markets business. The software is expected to reduce latency (or delay) by proactively checking transactions to ensure there is enough computing power and storage to execute them.
Through the partnership, Citi will also gain access to Vertex AI, the enterprise version of Google’s proprietary Gemini AI, and other open source large language models (LLMs), including Gemma, Meta, and Mistral. In the future, the bank expects to complete other pilots currently in development using AI tools, including customer service and call centers, document digitization, and personalized marketing tools.
Implementing cloud and AI tools brings new security considerations, from where the data comes from to who has access to it. To address these concerns, Kumar says, “All use cases are managed, monitored, and approved before they are released publicly.” This involves careful analysis of what kind of data is used, where it is hosted, and whether the data is stored for future use or is actively being used.
“We’re starting with a modernization platform focused on reducing risk,” says Google’s Bhat. “This is the foundational layer of how we approach the more innovative things we’re building: new products, services, and improved customer experiences across the company.”
strategic placement
The partnership is part of a larger effort by Citi CEO Jane Fraser to highlight the role financial infrastructure plays in the economy. Fraser last year According to reports The company’s business lines have been restructured to emphasize the role the bank’s treasury and custody services play in global finance.
“The end state will be a simplified operating model,” says Citi’s Kumar. “Our CEO and executive team have talked a lot about the ability to meet customers where they are and the ability to bring products to market at scale.”
This partnership is also part of Citi’s broader AI strategy. Citi widely applied report Last June, we predicted that 56% of banking jobs would likely be replaced by AI. Four days after the report was published, the bank presentation Strategic Investment in Commercial Lending AI Startups Quantification to Improve Commercial Lending Analytics.
Citi shares rose 1% today. Year to date, the company’s stock price has increased 15%, compared with a 26% increase for other U.S. banks tracked over the same period by the S&P U.S. Banks Index.
Citi’s partnership with Google puts it in a strategically different position than some of its competitors. That same month, Citi invested in Numerated. wall street journal reported Goldman Sachs deploys self-generated AI tool in August luck We exclusively report that 14,000 BNY employees are using Eliza, a new AI named after Alexander Hamilton’s wife.
This is not the first time an Alphabet subsidiary has partnered with Citi. Citi November 2020 presentation It will partner with Google to offer checking accounts using Google Plex, its digital checking service, which was canceled next year.
For Google Cloud, the Citi partnership comes as the company expands its efforts to help financial institutions use artificial intelligence. Perhaps most notable is Google Play in April. coalition To help integrate AI into customer service, we’re working with Discover Financial Services, the parent company behind Discover credit cards and Discover Bank.
“We believe there is a significant step change in the ability of enterprises to understand information between walls,” says Google’s Bhat. “Improving the customer experience our customers experience and enabling developers to build networks new experiences for our customers. This step function change is a combination of generative AI and machine learning.”
