Talent & Tech at the heart of Munir Nanji’s mission

INTERVIEW Talent & Tech at the heart of Munir Nanji’s mission

He is tasked on tapping Central Europe’s growth to boost Citi’s profits.

Citi believes that it has cracked the code on how to tap into Europe’s areas of growth in order to boost the bank’s profits, capital, and workplace dynamics—all enclosed in its “New” Europe Strategy.

“Our strategy is going to be around ensuring that we leverage capital from the firm and allocate it to companies that are growing much faster,” said Munir Nanji, newly appointed Central Europe Cluster Head and Citi Country Officer for the bank’s Czech Republic franchise.

The key to the strategy is talent allocation: making sure that Citi’s highly skilled workforce is distributed amongst its clusters that support Citi’s global operations and business. This is done by creating Centers of Excellence, Nanji told Asian Banking & Finance in an exclusive interview.

Nanji has his work cut out for him: he’s taking the helm at a critical time for Citi. Central Europe is expected to post strong growth of 4% in 2022, before slowing to 2.8% the following year. Nanji is tasked with ensuring that the bank reaps the full benefits of this growth by integrating the strategy. It’s a challenge he’s keenly aware of and eager to scale.

“If you look at the growth of Europe and Central Europe, the growth in GDP per capita is faster in central areas in Europe. So that’s one proxy. The other proxy, if you look at the age dynamics, demographics, you got more younger people, the millennials, in Central Europe than in Europe. Then if you look at our businesses in central Europe, its contribution to the European P&L [profit and loss] continues to grow steadily fast,” Nanji said, on why they adopted the “New” Europe Strategy.

The ‘New’ Europe Strategy

“So how do we make those markets the bedrock from an infrastructure standpoint? The ‘New’ Europe Strategy is about getting a bigger footprint within Europe, getting a bigger voice in the organisation, ensuring we get the mobility of talent, we get the acceleration of fund flow, and we then we support our clients to succeed around Europe and the rest of the world,” he said.

It’s a job that Nanji is more-than-equipped to take on. Prior to his new role as Central Europe Cluster Head and Czech Republic’s new country officer, he was head of Citi’s Global Subsidiaries Group (GSG) for the Asia Pacific. The GSG business provides institutional banking to the subsidiaries of the bank’s top-tier multinational clients.

As head of GSG APAC, the largest multinational business for Citi globally and the leading bank in Asia covering multinational clients, Nanji spearheaded a major talent allocation project: applying a differentiated coverage model.

Nanji led the GSG APAC to set up teams in three big hubs—Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore—in order to more effectively manage its clients that have regional buying and decision-making capabilities. The three hubs were chosen as these were the places where C-suite organisations are based at.

A key point of the model is to put bankers and support teams in markets where Citi’s clients, both the multinational and large Asian firms, have manufacturing operations or are perhaps looking to scale into countries such as India, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Small and medium-sized clients were not left behind in the model. Citi and Nanji, in particular, looked into how they can industrialise their coverage model so that they can service them more efficiently.

The solution they arrived at was by leveraging technology and assigning a team of bankers who, through tech, accessed clients to provide them with the relevant service.

Regulation, network

Asian companies are investing a lot in the European Union (EU), especially in the industrial and automotive space. Munir would like to use his experience to support the Asian supply chains to connect with producers and buyers in Europe and as a two-way street channelling the European investors to the Asian region.

Talking about the differences between the two regions Munir said that the EU, as an economic entity, is a more regulated area compared to Asia which means some processes and the decision-making process could be slower sometimes. On the other hand, this regulation gives very clear guidance in many topics like open banking, which is important for the development of the banking sector.

Munir Nanji, Central Europe Cluster Head and Citi Country Officer for Czech Republic

The ‘New’ Europe Strategy is about getting a bigger footprint within Europe