As the head of Citi's commercial bank, Tasnim Ghiawadwala provides full-scale products and services to midsize companies across the globe. In 2022, that meant delivering "the right solution at the right time," as she put it, to 14,000 enterprise businesses beset by inflation, rising interest rates and the rising costs of materials and labor.
To serve such a wide swath of businesses, ones that generate between $10 million and $3 billion in annual revenues, Ghiawadwala has followed her "north star": keeping the client in mind in every action and every initiative.
Ghiawadwala's arrival at Citi in October 2021 was more in the nature of a homecoming. Previously, she spent three years at Barclays as head of its U.K. corporate bank. But before that she logged 21 years with Citicorp serving in divisions spanning investment banking, corporate and senior regional management as well as commercial banking.
Now, the bank has credited Ghiawadwala with driving growth within the institutional clients group that CCB is a part of. Although Citi does not break out the commercial bank's financial performance, her division contributed $2.7 billion of revenues in 2021, according to the bank's disclosure during its investor day in 2022.
To grow market share in the commercial bank with the aim of doubling its slice of a
And in order to make sure that her growth-minded businesses are connected to all the capabilities her vast corporation has to offer, Ghiawadwala launched global network banking, in partnership with Citi's banking, capital markets and advisory business, last winter. The result is that CCB clients who are subsidiaries now have access to the breadth of services in Citi's global network across all of its 95 markets. Previously, CCB was only able to offer that in select markets.
Further, to provide core client access to CCB's myriad and, frankly, Ghiawadwala said, often complex offerings, she and her team launched
A strong DEI proponent, Ghiawadwala said that access is critical for women professionals trying to break into and thrive in the banking industry. However, she said she has seen "enormous" yet "insufficient" progress on this front in her 25-year career. One way forward, she said, is to make sure that women from all social strata — not just Ivy League graduates, for example — have the opportunity to gain entry into the profession. Once they are in the door, the next step is to clear the path to upward mobility — a process often stymied when women start families, Ghiawadwala said.
"Take for example a woman who goes on maternity leave only to return to find her book of business distributed among the team, and who finds herself starting from scratch," she posited. One solution "is to make sure the woman is given back her entire portfolio when she returns."
Ghiawadwala and her family immigrated from India to the U.K. in the early 1970s. She was raised in London and earned a B.S. in computer science and management from Kings College. That's where she lives now (London is a hub for a number of global heads of New York-based Citicorp) with her husband and two daughters. One of her girls, she said, is weighing a career in banking.
Ghiawadwala is a board member for Developments in Literacy UK, a nonprofit that provides low-cost, high-quality education to thousands of children across Pakistan, with a focus on girls' education in remote areas of the country.
Ghiawadwala cited "positivity" as a valuable leadership technique in rocky times. "When team members see that you're enthusiastic … even when the chips are down, [they] will tend to emulate what they see," she says. High belief and high conviction in the organization and its mission also play a part. Ultimately, however, Ghiawadwala said her "north star" of focusing on client needs benefits not only the CCB's entrepreneurs but helps her to be a more effective leader.
"When your team members see you putting the client first … I think it makes your job a bit easier as well," Ghiawadwala said. "What is the purpose here? It is to serve our clients."
