Citibank CEO Michael Corbat wanted to simplify his company to enhance customer engagement and the overall customer experience.
Citibank has more than 4,600 branches in the world and holds more than $300 billion deposits. Citibank is the third largest retail bank in the United States based on deposits.
During the company’s Jan. 15 fiscal fourth-quarter conference call, Corbat talked about this strategic simplification.
“We made significant progress against each of my execution priorities,” Corbat said, according to Seeking Alpha. “We’ve become a simpler 
and smaller company. We’ve made the tough decisions regarding what businesses couldn’t generate the returns our shareholders expect and deserve. And as an example, we’ve exited or are in the progress of exiting from 19 consumer markets. We said we’d wind down Citi Holdings and drive it to breakeven and now consists of only 4% of our balance sheet and not only as holdings broken even, it’s been profitable for six straight quarters.”
Overall, Corbat said the company has reduced head count by 28,000 people, assets by over $130 billion, and legal entities by more than one third. What’s more, the real estate footprint shrank by almost 20%, including 182 operation centers, as part of an effort to establish shared service centers and mine the efficiencies of the business model.
“The other side of the coin is to make sure that we allocate these finite resources to where they can get the best returns,” Corbat said. “In our Institutional businesses, we’ve successfully focused on our target clients, achieving wallet share and market share gains. In Global Consumer, we’ve reduced our brand’s footprint by 25% to concentrate our presence in the fastest growing cities, while investing in our mobile channels. We’ve simplified our branded cards portfolio reducing our offerings by 60% and are preparing to launch the Costco card this year.”
Customer satisfaction, measured by Net Promoter Scores, has improved meaningfully, Corbat said.
“We are unquestionably a safer and stronger company,” he said. “As 2015 shows, we’ve significantly improved both the quality and consistency of our earnings. We’ve worked hard to transform our company and the changes we’ve made have put us in a strong position to navigate the current environment.”
The $17.1 billion generated in net income was the highest since 2006 for the company.