Citigroup CEO Mike Corbat wants to simplify his company and make it a more efficiently run machine that offers customers great experiences.
During the company’s Oct. 14 third-quarter fiscal 2014 earnings conference call, Corbat explained the steps he’s taken to achieve this goal.
“As you know, we’re committed to simplifying our company and allocating our finite resources to the business where we can generate the best returns for our shareholders,” Corbat said, according to Seeking Alpha transcript. “Consistent with these priorities we intend to exit our consumer businesses in 11 markets – among them Japan, Egypt, and Peru. We’ll continue to serve our institutional clients in these markets which remain important to our global network.”
While those consumer franchises present real value, Corbat said they didn’t offer a “path for meaningful return.”
Corbat believes Citigroup’s Consumer business will achieve stronger performance by focusing on the countries where its scale and network provide a competitive advantage.
“Sales processes are already underway in most of these markets and I expect these actions to be substantially completed by the end of 2015,” he explained. “At that point, we’ll have reduced our Consumer footprint by 19 markets since 2012 and Global Consumer Banking will be serving 57 million clients across 24 markets.”
What’s more, Corbat stressed the importance of Citigroup’s capital planning process.
“This must impact everything, from increased business engagement and enhancements to our forecasting models and scenario design processes – all of which lead to an improved approach to risk and controls,” he said. “This work will continue as we get closer to receiving the 
2015 stress test scenario from The Fed at which point we’ll prepare a strong submission, which reflects the work that has been done.”
John Gerspach, Citigroup’s Chief Financial Officer, said in the past 12 months the company has sold or closed nearly 90 branches in North America.
“During this same period, we grew average retail loans by 9% and average deposits by 2%, including 10% growth in checking account balances,” Gerspach said. “We also continued to see momentum in branded cards. While total average loans have continued to decline modestly this mostly reflects the runoff of promotional rate balances.”