(13 April 2026 – United States) Citi is applying artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline account onboarding and legacy system upgrades as the group seeks to enhance productivity.
US banks broadly are embracing AI, the most significant high-tech upheaval to financial markets, production and customer behaviour through agentic commerce since “Dot Com” internet boom in the early 2000s.
Citi now has almost 50,000 staff in its technology teams and continues to hire more software engineers. Citi has now made AI training mandatory in many instances, requiring completion of a “Prompting like a Pro” programme within two months. The group is also working to implement consistent AI tools across the company as it increases investment in developing and deploying them.
“We still have legacy systems, but after the tech investments we’ve made, we are in a much better place. AI helps migrate data from legacy systems, automate coding and test more and faster” commented Citi Head of Technology and Business Enablement, Tm Ryan.
“AI is also being used to streamline client onboarding. In our US services division, a document-processing tool has cut about an hour from the document review stage, reducing it to 15 minutes before an account can be opened.”
“We still have legacy systems, but after the tech investments we’ve made, we are in a much better place. AI helps migrate data from legacy systems, automate coding and test more and faster.”
The bank remains under two consent orders issued in 2020 by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which required stronger risk management controls and fixes to regulatory data inaccuracies and governance.