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Treasury & Capital Markets
In the fight for talent, Citi plans to secure the brightest minds
Citi's venture capital unit partners with Singapore Management University to offer financial technology courses to undergrads from 2020
The Asset 15 Jul 2019
Vikram Subrahmanyam, head of operations and technology, Asia Pacific at Citi
Vikram Subrahmanyam, head of operations and technology, Asia Pacific at Citi

Citi Ventures, the venture capital unit of US banking and financial services group Citi, is partnering with Singapore Management University to offer courses in financial technology to undergraduates from January 2020.

The programme will allow students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to real-world challenges faced by banks and financial institutions.

The courses will be conducted through the Citi University Partnerships in Innovation & Discovery (Cupid) programme. The Singapore Management University (SMU) is the first partner university in Asia for Citi.

The Asset's Tom King spoke with Vikram Subrahmanyam, head of operations and technology, Asia Pacific at Citi, and Hasan Kazmi, director and head of partnerships at Citi Ventures Studio, to drill into the program and understand its aims for the new Singapore-based module.  

The Asset: The Citi University Partnerships in Innovation & Discovery (CUPID) programme was launched in 2017. Has the bank unearthed talent you eventually hired?

Hasan Kazmi: One of the main goals of the CUPID programme is to develop a diverse pipeline of talent at Citi with new skillsets and areas of expertise.

Since we launched the program in the US in 2017, we have engaged more than 1,200 students from 31 universities including Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University (Stern) and Stanford University just to name a few.

We have certainly unearthed some interesting talent but the programme is still relatively young and most, if not all, the students are still in the process of completely their courses. We have hired six students for various full-time and summer Citi programmes and expect to hire many more students upon their graduation.

While in the CUPID programme, our students have worked across the enterprise with various business units including: Markets and Securities Services, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Human Resources and Citi Ventures.

One of the benefits of working for our company is the global reach and programme students have worked on projects around the world including in: the US, Mexico, Japan, Dublin, Milan and London. Global exposure is critical to helping students understand new and different market needs, opportunities and challenges.

As a result of the early success of the CUPID programme, we have now extended it to Asia. The SMU partnership is the first for us and we are looking to expand to additional locations in the region next year.

The Asset: Has the program seen a practical idea/development adopted into Citi yet?

Hasan Kazmi: There have been a number of impactful solutions developed by students from the programme across different parts of the world that have been implemented across Citi. These include solutions that have supported projects within Citi’s internal startup incubator, D10x, which encourages internal entrepreneurship by way of building, testing and launching new solutions for our clients.

For example, students from our programme in the US have developed an algorithm to predict human resources talent flow, created a “Smart Cities Index” to rank municipalities on suitability for fintech investments, and developed a machine learning based model to predict debt default risk for sovereign bonds.

Other examples include new payment and mobile solutions that were developed out of our Citibanamex location in Mexico City, market entry strategies for new products and locations, data solutions for our recruitment and human resources teams.

The Asset: What are your ultimate expectations for the new Singapore partnership?

Vikram Subrahmanyam: With this partnership with SMU, we expect to tap the technological expertise of these high-performing students and bring a new level of focus around the work that we are doing internally at Citi, including the acceleration of innovation projects across the different business units.

We will leverage the learnings from this partnership, and share best practices with other Citi offices in the region.

Hopefully this partnership will also enable us to develop a robust pipeline of talent which is critical to the success of Citi’s digital future.

The Asset: Banks are having a tough time in attracting innovative students, does this program give you the edge in the fight for talent?

Vikram Subrahmanyam: Firstly, let me humbly admit that we don’t have a problem attracting innovative students. Citi in Asia is a talent machine and continues to be an employer of choice across geographies.

A case in point is the more than 300 analysts from top schools in Asia that Citi hires every year, just in our technology roles alone.

The CUPID programme certainly raises our profile with students who would have otherwise considered more entrepreneurial opportunities, such as working in startups.

As the dotcom boom and subsequent bust of 2000 has reminded us, large organizations like ours that can offer purposeful work and global career opportunities can better withstand headwinds and rise to the occasion in times of challenges such as difficult market conditions.

The Asset: How does it differentiate from, for example, DBS’s hackathon to hire for its fintech drive?

Vikram Subrahmanyam: Citi actively runs hackathons globally which is a core part of our business. We strongly believe that hackathons allow us to foster creativity, build stronger teams, gain experience in new and emerging technologies as well as offer opportunities for cross-team collaboration within the bank and externally with the ecosystem that will expand our innovation toolbox for solving client problems.

The CUPID programme has organized hackathons at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Columbia and Lehigh Universities and plans to do many more in the upcoming academic year. In Singapore, we have run a technology hackathon as part of the Campus Recruitment Team’s continuous efforts to build a strong future pipeline of talents as well as partnered with Girls in Tech (GIT) Singapore to organize a hackathon for our markets and securities services business.

Our hackathons are global by nature, made possible by our bank’s globality and comprehensive international network. Adopting an outside-in approach to innovation, our hackathons allow us to gain a diversity of experience from overseas talent to come up with best-in-class products and services that help to raise industry standards as a result of better banking services and experiences that we provide to our clients and consumers alike. All these affirm our efforts in contributing to Singapore’s Smart Nation ambition.

The Asset: The Singapore (SMU) tie-up is the first in Asia, are there plans to expand across Asia?

Hasan Kazmi: Definitely. We are planning to deepen and strengthen partnerships with selected top schools across Asia’s key geographies, first starting with Singapore with SMU, and then expanding to other Asian countries.

The Asset: Since the inception of the program, has anything surprised you about the talent?

Hasan Kazmi: We have noted that the students come from a variety of backgrounds and studies including degrees in business, finance, design, policy, engineering and data science who have been able to give us many different perspectives on how we think about the future of the financial industry and how we can meet our clients’ ever-changing needs.

The students are extremely versatile and bring a host of diverse skillsets to the table. For example, we have seen students who are studying finance but also have deep programming experience that is often self-taught.

Similarly, we have seen design students who are very passionate about financial services, develop solutions that are extremely creative and unique. It has only strengthened our belief that diversity will be a driver of long-term growth.

For example, we worked with Cornell Tech students on a Fintech Index which helped us to identify cities that have key ecosystem characteristics that support the growth of fintech firms. 

We have also worked with schools such as New York University (Stern), whose students have helped us think through how to lower the debt level for graduating students. These are just a couple of examples of how students have helped us to identify unique new products, new userbases and technological advancements.

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