Citibank To Focus On 7 Industries

Citibank has identified seven industry groups in the country for preferential treatment. This is a part of the embedded bank scheme adopted by it globally.

The bank has decided to invest large amounts in these industries which are expected to grow fast in the next two to three years, Citibank CEO for India, David P Conner told Business Standard. The amount for individual industry varies from US$0.5 billion to US$7.5 billion.

The industry groups in India that the bank will focus on are, petroleum, information technology, automobiles, consumer goods, engineering, branded products and oil and gas. The composition of industry groups vary from one country to another. For example, power is included in the list of focus industries in some countries, but not in India.

 

Under the new strategy that came into effect last month, Citibank has decided to align its credit programme on industry lines rather than on geographical lines which was the practice until now.

Under the new dispensation, the backroom office and the front office of the bank are required to work in close co-ordination. Each industry head at the bank makes a representation to the top officials on the state of the industry, technological and market developments both in the country and abroad, and a decision is taken on the extent of the exposure that the bank will take on the industry.

The marketing department is thus in a more confident position while talking to clients.

The back office keeps a watch on the trends in each industry and an annual review exercise is carried out to see if a change in strategy is called for, Conner added.

Under the corporate approach that we followed till now, we found that our focus was getting too narrow, so we decided to do something different and adopted the industry approach, he said.

Under the new approach, Citibank officials would approach selected companies in each of the seven industry groups, appraise them about what is happening in the industry world-wide and assess whether the company has the credit absorption capability.

The final decision will of course be on commercial lines.

The overall approach of Citibank is to expand the product and the customer base by improving the service aspect. The quality of financial services is not satisfactory. And there are many defects. This is a quality journey for the Citibank, under which we target to reduce the decision cycle time to one-tenth by year 2010, Conner said. Citibank will spend considerable amount of money and time on training the staff in the skills, Conner pointed out.