For much of last year, Titi Cole wore multiple hats. She was head of operations and fraud prevention for Citi's consumer bank, where she launched new fraud-detection capabilities, strengthened risk controls with enhanced governance oversight for issue and third-party management, and invested in controls automation and digital monitoring.
Cole was also Citi's chief client officer, and in that role she spearheaded the bank's first holistic client experience (CX) strategy. Her initiatives on this front included the CEO Client Obsession Awards, Client Obsession Academy, and Tell Us—a place to share real-time feedback on Citi's customer experience. She hosted the bank's first Global Client Obsession Week, which had approximately 31,000 participants.
Not surprisingly for the most senior African American woman at Citigroup, Cole champions diversity, creating a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities working at Citi. She established the DEI Council, expanded criteria for diverse slates and panels, and helped launch inclusive hiring training and DEI goals for 10,000 managers. Cole mentors 10 colleagues and the women and Black affinity networks.
In February, Citi appointed Cole as CEO of legacy franchises, putting her in charge of the consumer businesses the bank is exiting: consumer banking businesses in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as consumer, wealth and commercial banking in Mexico, totaling 14 markets. She is responsible for these businesses' divestiture strategy, plus delivering on revenue and profitability targets while strengthening risk management, enhancing efficiency, driving client excellence and retaining talent. The business unit has so far announced agreements to sell nine businesses.
In addition to the challenge of finding buyers for the units, Cole has had to rally the 60,000 Citi employees who are about to become Citi alumni. She does this through communication, she said: "I have proactively engaged with the team around the sense of pride about being part of that and being able to land at the buyer on the front foot, feeling really proud about all they've accomplished and how they did it the right way, which helps them in their future roles at the buyers."
