Ally Financial taps former Citi exec to lead corporate strategy

Former Citigroup executive Dinesh Chopra has joined Ally Financial in the newly created role of chief strategy officer.

Chopra had most recently served as global head of strategy for several of Citi’s key business lines, including its retail bank, mortgages and digital payments. In a news release, Ally said that Chopra played a key role in developing a three-year strategic plan at Citi that helped improve the performance of its U.S. retail banking business.

"I am confident Dinesh's experience and skills are a great match for Ally as we continue to grow our business and differentiate our industry-leading products and services," said Jeffrey Brown, the CEO at the $164 billion-asset Ally. "Adding a CSO to our leadership team will enable us to better evolve our business so that we keep a leading edge in the marketplace as we grow, while also maintaining our keen focus on innovation.”

Ally, a digital bank with no physical branches, continues to build out new consumer products and services to go along with its traditional businesses of deposit gathering, automobile lending and corporate finance. Over the past 18 months it has added credit cards, started offering home loans and acquired an online wealth management firm TradeKing, which it rebranded Ally Invest.

Chopra said in a news release that he has been monitoring Ally’s expansion and has been impressed with its ability to innovate.

"In this new role I have an incredible opportunity to work with the leadership team to push Ally's diversification strategy forward and support our mission of providing digital solutions and services that enable our customers to achieve financial well-being," he said.

Chopra will be based in Charlotte, where Ally has roughly 1,700 employees. The company is headquartered in Detroit.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Digital banking Online banking Consumer lending Consumer banking Wealth management Auto lending Ally Financial Citigroup
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER