Citi names company veteran Anand Selva to lead risk management overhaul

Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg

Citigroup has chosen one of its highest-ranking executives to take the reins of a multiyear initiative to improve its risk management and internal control systems.

Anand Selva, who leads Citi's personal banking and wealth management business, was promoted to the newly created position of chief operating officer. Selva, a 32-year Citi employee, takes over responsibilities previously held by Karen Peetz, who plans to retire in May, according to an internal memo.

Selva, whose appointment is effective immediately, is now in charge of running the megabank's ongoing efforts to strengthen its risk and control environment, which has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny in recent years.

Selva will also continue to oversee personal banking and wealth management, which includes Citi's retail franchise, its branded cards unit and its global wealth management division. There are no plans to appoint someone else to lead that business, a Citi spokesperson said Wednesday.

Citi CEO Jane Fraser praised Selva in the internal memo for his "exceptional record as a highly disciplined operator who delivers results." She wrote that the risk management within the company's personal banking and wealth management business has gotten better under Selva's leadership, and that "strong progress" has been made in terms of improving controls and digitizing the operating model.

Citi has been overhauling its company-wide risk management and control operations following a pair of enforcement actions in 2020 that included a $400 million fine. The New York bank has been investing heavily in technology to improve its data infrastructure and increase automation.

Peetz's upcoming departure marks the second time she has stepped away from banking. In 2016, she retired as president of Bank of New York Mellon, but four years later she joined Citi as its chief administrative officer. She was hired to oversee Citi's project management office, strengthen its data architecture and improve consistency with regulators.

Peetz's hiring came about two months before Citi mistakenly paid about $900 million to creditors of the cosmetics company Revlon, and about four months before the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency hit the bank with the two October 2020 enforcement actions.

Those consent orders, which demanded that Citi clean up its troubled risk management framework and controls systems, followed previous regulatory actions related to deficiencies in the bank's anti-money-laundering compliance program and its overall compliance and control infrastructure.

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Peetz has spent the last two-and-a-half years addressing the regulators' concerns. She has led the development of remediation plans and put in place the resources needed to make the changes, Fraser noted in the memo. Those resources include the hiring of a significant number of technology and data personnel, Peetz said during the company's investor day in March 2022.

Last year, the OCC freed Citi from a 2012 consent order related to the company's anti-money-laundering controls and its Bank Secrecy Act compliance.

Citi has "nothing to share" about whether it will fill the chief administrative officer role, the spokesperson said.