Chief Compliance Officer
To say that Mary McNiff’s current job is high stakes would be an understatement. The chief compliance officer at Citigroup since June 2020, McNiff took charge of the global company’s compliance risk management division four months before federal regulators announced enforcement actions and a $400 million civil money penalty for failing to fix long-standing risk management problems.
One year later, McNiff, who is on Citi’s management team and reports directly to Chief Executive Jane Fraser, is deep in the multiyear overhaul of the company’s risk management processes. She is focused on managing risk by digitizing those processes and building compliance checks along the way.
Her three-year vision: to be able to push a button and see Citi’s risks in real time on a dashboard.
McNiff never pictured herself leading a compliance function. An auditor by training, she began her career at Abbey National Bank in London before moving on to JPMorgan Chase, Barclays Bank, Lloyds Banking Group and, in 2012, Citigroup.
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Before leading compliance, McNiff was chief auditor for two years and then spent 15 months as CEO of Citibank, the banking unit within Citi that accounts for approximately 75% of the company’s $2.2 trillion of assets.
In a way, her new role is a perfect fit for her, even if she was nervous about taking it.
“I’ve spent my life being uncomfortable — and I’m now comfortable with that,” she said. “From attending college with students from different backgrounds than my own to joining an analyst program as a non-analyst, to working all over the world and tackling challenging new roles, I’ve grown accustomed to dealing with situations that I’m not always fully equipped to handle.”
Apart from overseeing global compliance, McNiff is a co-leader of the Citi Women Affinity group, which promotes gender equality across the company. McNiff and her team are also working to create an apprenticeship program for underserved youth that will introduce compliance as a career pathway to Black and Latinx students.
