CitiBank To Exit Retail Banking In India:

In India, Citi Bank has only 35 retail branches and employs about 4,000 people in its consumer banking business. In contrast, one of India’s largest domestic banks, State Bank of India, has about 24,000 branches. In Asia as a whole, at the end of 2020, Citigroup had 224 retail branches and $123.9 billion in deposits.
Citi’s CEO, Jane Fraser, said in a call on the bank’s first quarter earning that it is announcing strategic actions in its Global Consumer Banking – to divert capital and investment where it has the most growth potential. Its Global Consumer Banking presence in Asia and EMEA would be focused only on four locations – Singapore, UAE, Hong Kong and London.
The bank will exit 13 international consumer banking markets across Asia and parts of Europe, which includes India and China, Australia, Bahrain, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. No immediate service disruptions expected as it will continue to serve all its existing customers. The bank said that its institutional client group will continue to serve customers in these 13 countries. Citibank India has now put on sale its retail banking business that includes advances totalling Rs 66,507 crore and deposits worth Rs 1,57,869 crore.
Citibank India, which began operations here in 1902. It popularised the concept of credit cards and ATMs in India in the ’80s. Data from the Reserve Bank of India show that Citi has nearly 26,45,784 credit card consumers in India, with a nearly 4.29% share of the market measured in the number of cards outstanding as of February 2021. However the market leader in this segment, HDFC Bank, who in the same month has nearly nearly 1,51,97,803 customers and a share of nearly 24.65%. HDFC Bank is temporarily prohibited from issuing credit cards by the RBI as a penalty of experiencing frequent online outages. Total credit cards outstanding as on February month end are 6,16,47,183.

Citibank will not be the first foreign bank to scale down its operations in India. In 2013, Ratnakar Bank Limited (RBL Bank) bought three businesses – mortgages, credit cards, and business banking – from the Royal Bank of Scotland for an undisclosed sum. In the same year, IndusInd Bank purchased Deutsche Bank’s credit card business – almost 2 lakh customers for ₹224 crores.
Western banks HSBC and RBS have also trimmed their foreign retail banking operations in recent years due to costs and low growth.
The big question here is who will buy the bank’s retail business. It is tough to find a new buyer with proper licensing with RBI during this period. There will be different valuation for there different business segments. So if some bank plans to buy their mortgage business they can and if one wants to buy credit card business can go that segment individual.