Just before Citigroup Inc.’s tech chief faced his first global town hall meeting, he got some pointed advice from his teenager: Make sure the technology works.

That hasn’t always been a given at Citigroup.

For the past year, Tim Ryan — an earnest, soft-spoken Bostonian who was once told in high school he’d never amount to much — has been untangling legacy software and data systems that have irked the bank’s moneymakers and regulators, and have at times made it an industry punchline. The most notorious moments: “fat-finger” errors that accidentally credited fortunes to recipients.

Now, his division has made enough progress that it recently invited the bank’s global workforce to a first-of-its-kind update on what’s done and what’s to come. The town hall – with the energy of a Silicon Valley product launch – opened to thumping music and a montage video with a cybernetic take on Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, before Ryan walked on stage in jeans and white sneakers. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser soon followed, urging tech staffers to keep going — “crushing the competition.”

It was a striking performance for a company once known for underinvesting in software and data management, resulting in a patchwork of legacy systems that prompted bank examiners to demand an overhaul and impose penalties.

“I came in with my eyes wide open, in terms of where we were and what needed to be done,” Ryan later said in an interview.

He commands one of Citigroup’s biggest armies of staff and oversees a budget that reflects the bank’s more urgent focus on tech. It spent just over $9 billion, or almost a fifth of total operating expenses last year, on technology and communications – a larger proportion than its main competitors – according to regulatory filings.

The alternative, putting off upgrades, has proved costly in other ways.

Five years ago, the bank accidentally wired more than $900 million to creditors of cosmetics company Revlon Inc., setting off a two-year legal fight to recoup the money. This year, other errors emerged in the media. Citigroup credited one account with $81 trillion after an employee failed to remove the line of zeros that automatically filled an electronic form. A separate copy-paste error almost missent $6 billion. Both mistakes were undone, and no money left the bank.

In another incident that hasn’t previously been reported, an error let a pair of people on the same account withdraw a roughly $100,000 certificate of deposit twice, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified describing the behind-the-scenes problem.

Some of the processes at issue in those cases now barely need humans. “Where the risk is high, we’ve taken the right steps to automate both detective and preventative controls,” Ryan said.

Not a Consultant

Before Ryan arrived, Citigroup insiders jokingly dubbed the team overseeing its technology the “Verizon Mafia” because it has long included a group of managers who had jumped from Verizon Communications Inc. to Barclays Plc to JPMorgan Chase & Co. before landing at the firm.

When his appointment was announced, some employees rolled their eyes again. Under Fraser, a former McKinsey & Co. partner, the bank has faced criticism for running up consulting bills — once spending more on advisers than tech as part of the company’s so-called transformation plan in 2021.

Then with Ryan’s hiring, it seemed the bank had put another consultant in charge: His last job before joining Citigroup was running PwC’s US workforce of 75,000 people. He said that’s the wrong way to see him.

“The reality is I was a CEO for eight years,” he said. “I’ve sweat over the balance sheet, delivered sustainable earnings, driven growth, dealt with our own regulatory challenges, had a board. People perceive me as a consultant. But it is what it is.”

Even more, he aims to reduce the bank’s reliance on third parties. “I want us to own more,” Ryan said. “It’s not an expense thing – it’s a confidence thing. I need our people to know that I trust them.”

The bank’s back-office technology empire includes 50,000 full-time staff, comprising more than a fifth of the firm’s 229,000 employees. Adding to that are 45,000 contractors. Together, they span outposts in India, China, the UK and Canada, though much of the senior power is in Irving, Texas.

Since arriving, Ryan has reshaped that workforce, cutting 3,500 positions at certain locations in China as he consolidates staff into key hubs. He also has shifted managers, with some departing.

“Accountability doesn’t have to be a public hanging,” he said. “You mentor people, and if it doesn’t work, you work them out of the system.”

Teacher’s Warning

One Citigroup habit Ryan is trying to break is the impulse to keep modifying old technology. The bank customized a key enterprise software platform, ServiceNow, so much that it struggled to receive updates from the software’s maker.

Simpler is better, he said. So is moving quickly.

The mission is well-suited to the executive, who grew up with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

“My high school biology teacher told me I’d never amount to anything in life. My second grade teacher tied me to the chair and taped my mouth on the first day,” he said. But he found strategies for dealing with his challenges and later peace in a demanding industry. “When everything’s moving so fast, that actually is conducive to someone like me.”

In the past year, the bank has distilled 12 screening systems for international sanctions into one, retired 20 cash equities platforms and launched a new one, and consolidated software for banking teams so they can manage deals in one place.

It also developed a relationship with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and rolled out a generative AI tool to 150,000 employees. And the technology team helped the rest of the bank complete the separation of Banamex, Citigroup’s retail unit in Mexico, ahead of a planned public listing.

Personal Memos

In an unusual move for a Wall Street executive, Ryan sends near-weekly emails to his global staff, detailing intimate moments in his personal and professional life.

Last month, he sent them an email titled “Lifelong principles rediscovered,” in which he described his three-day vacation to Rome with his wife, including reflections on a tiff with her and their sighting of the new pope.

He signed off: “Mondays will be okay — they always are!”