- Dipendra Malhotra is joining Citi as its head of wealth technology, Business Insider has learned.
- Malhotra spent 11 years at Morgan Stanley leading AI and tech for its wealth business.
- Citi's wealth business has been dragged down by its poor tech and operating platform.
Citi's wealth boss, Andy Sieg, is bringing in a Morgan Stanley technology leader to strengthen the bank's offering in the ultra-competitive race to manage wealth clients' money.
The bank has hired Dipendra Malhotra as head of wealth technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Malhotra is joining Citi in late-May after 11 years at its rival, Morgan Stanley, where he led the bank's AI, machine learning, analytics, and data for its wealth management business.
Improving technology and digital offerings within Citi's wealth management unit has been a top priority for Sieg, who Citi CEO Jane Fraser tapped in 2023 to turn the wealth unit around. Citibank has struggled with its tech over the years, a problem that has extended to its wealth business. An internal audit conducted by Ernst & Young estimated that it would cost the bank at least $500 million to fix its patchwork of tech systems, Business Insider reported last year.
Still, it's an area where Sieg is hoping to gain some ground.
Citi's technology and operating platform "has been a limiting factor in this business," Sieg said at the BofA Securities Financial Services Conference in February. He has confidence that Fraser's transformation initiative, and its focus on data quality, is fortuitous for his business, adding that "we're setting the stage for us to be able to compete in a very different way to put work" for both clients and advisors.
While at Morgan Stanley, Malhotra was responsible for developing and maintaining data, AI, and machine learning tech for its wealth business. Morgan Stanley made headlines as one of the first Wall Street firms to partner with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, which has afforded its financial advisors with generative AI tools to help lessen drudge work.
When Malhotra joins Citi in a few months, he'll report directly to its chief information officer, Jonathan Lofthouse. Lofthouse became the bank's CIO when he absorbed the co-CIO position held by Shadman Zafar until he departed the bank in February.
At Citi, Malhotra is tasked with spearheading the modernization of its wealth technology, according to an internal memo from Lofthouse, seen by BI. He'll be working closely with two relatively new faces at Citi, Eric Lordi, a former JPMorgan executive, who heads up the wealth platform and experience and joined in January, and Joe Bonanno, who was named Citi's head of data, analytics, and innovation in July.
"Technology is the backbone of our ability to serve clients today and in the future, especially in an industry that is evolving at an unprecedented pace," Lofthouse said in the memo about Malhotra. "To make sure we are providing the absolute best wealth experiences for our clients, our technology must be nothing short of industry-leading,"
