The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency lifted a 10-year-old consent order with Citigroup in a victory for Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser, who’s dedicated thousands of employees to improving her bank’s risk and controls systems.
In a memo to staff obtained by Bloomberg, Fraser gave an update on the 2012 order, which was tied to the bank’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws and the Bank Secrecy Act. In the original order, the OCC had said that Citigroup failed to conduct proper due diligence on customers and was too slow to file suspicious-activity reports. The deficiencies prevented the lender from identifying risky customers and monitoring client relationships, the regulator said at the time.
The OCC’s decision to lift the order is a win for Citigroup, which has been working to address two other consent orders with the OCC and the Federal Reserve stemming from 2020. That work involves more than 9,000 employees and an overhaul of risk and controls systems.
“We have worked very hard to remediate the issues identified in the OCC’s consent order by strengthening internal controls, independent testing and how we conduct due diligence,” Fraser said in the memo. “The lifting of the consent order gives us confidence that we can address long-standing issues in our risk and control environment as we push forward with the transformation.”
A spokeswoman for the bank confirmed the contents of the memo but declined to comment further. An OCC spokesperson declined to comment.
