My story V

It was the second year since I joined ABN Amro bank, when the major shareholders decided to sell the assets and the brand. A bank group including 5 of the largest banks in the industry bought ABN’s assets around the world separately. The biggest buyer was RBS which was practicing a quite aggressive expanding strategy. RBS was the fifth largest bank at the time in the world. It wanted to expand businesses in Asia-Pacific and so it took the biggest share of the assets in the area. Unfortunately the 2008 financial crisis came and all financial institutions were pulling back their businesses. Duo to RBS's aggressive strategy, it was struck badly. ABN Amro changed its name to RBS and soon the bank decided to sell assets to shrink its debts. It had to seek help from the government of England and close non-core business overseas. In 2010, the retail business in China began to shrink and many staff members began to find new jobs. I joined Citibank on July 2011 as a Citigold relationship manager and took over a 200-client base with USD 20 million assets. The role of RM in citibank focused on maintaining existing clients and revenue productivity. Citibank is quite famous in the world and it has complete systems in every segments of bank businesses. What impressed me most was the training system and IT system. The training system was brought from the headquarters in the US and the trainers were quite qualified. There were courses for all levels of staff, and it could help establish and enhance skills and financial knowledge. The IT system of Citibank was also more powerful than most other foreign banks. With the exiting of ABN, Citibank seized the largest market share in foreign banks. For regulation reasons and the fact that foreign banks have different advantages in China’s financial market, they mainly focused on overseas market and standard products which were not the main investment method. In order to explore these businesses all the staff must be well trained.