The $2 trillion Citi is tapping the cloud to scale up its AI capabilities, recently launching three gen AI-driven productivity tools to 150,000 employees:

• Citi Stylus, a tool that delivers immediate insights from documents in several formats;
• Citi Assist, a desktop assistant to help employees navigate Citi policies and procedures; and
• Citi Squad, a tool that helps Citi developers automate noncoding tasks such as code review and document generation.

The tools took only “a matter of weeks” to get up and running throughout the company, which would not have been possible without a cloud platform, Dmitri Furman, global head of public cloud at Citi, said during the Jan. 28 webinar “Best practices in cloud migration for financial services” presented by Bank Automation News.

Watch the cloud migration webinar here

“We are now at the age where cloud is the underpinning technology for banks’ ability to scale out their AI adoption,” Furman said.

For example, the bank’s Citi Assist tool allows employees to access information on company policies stored in the cloud, which would take hours otherwise, he said.

Citi is now focused on gen AI applications for supporting its call centers, Furman said.

“It really stands out and puts the spotlight on the transformative technology of cloud and continues to drive the appetite within the bank to continue to modernize,” he said.

Citi’s streamlined approach

Financial institutions looking to continuously add AI capabilities need a strong modeling platform they can build from, Zac Maufe, managing director of global regulated industries at Google Cloud, said during the webinar, echoing Furman.

Cloud migration enables a company to embed AI into all of its processes, allowing frontline employees to be more effective, Maufe said.

Citi, in October 2024, tapped Google Cloud for AI and cloud migration, which includes using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to modernize Citi functions, including:

• Developer toolkits;
• Document processing; and
• Customer service.

“I think what Citi is doing — both on the modernizing their technology infrastructure and on the AI side — is a great example of what’s possible,” Maufe said.

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