Citi launches integrated banking product for younger customers

Mumbai: American lender Citi Wednesday announced a new product offering in the country targeted at people below 40 years of age, seeking to address multiple banking needs of the growing segment through a single relationship.

The bank commissioned an in-house study which showed there is an emerging class of wealth builders globally and India is witnessing the fastest growth in this class, Citi's country business manager in the global consumer bank, Kartik Kaushik, told reporters here.

He said this segment has peculiar banking needs for saving, wealth management, international travel and lifestyle, and Citi launched its new offering 'Citi Priority' seeking to address the same.

It involves giving a bouquet of offerings to the customer, he said, adding that for the first time a bank is combining a credit and debit card as part of the offering.

The service comes free for the consumers if they maintain a 'relationship value', which includes savings, credit cards, mortgages, travel bookings, etc of Rs 15 lakh per year, he said, adding that fees set in if the value falls below the level.

India is the fifth market globally where 'Priority' has been launched and there are six more geographies where it will be launched soon, he said.

Kaushik said the larger focus of the bank is to expand Citi's 'share of wallet' and not on acquiring customers. He said he expects ten percent of the individual account holders to sign up for the new offering, but declined to give the overall base.

For Citi India, the youth segment constitutes a fifth of the overall revenues and it has been outgrowing other segments by up to three times, he said.

He exuded confidence that shifting from a current perspective of selling multiple products to a single customer, to giving a single offering to a customer for free, will not hurt its revenues in the long term as the volume of transactions grows.