You bring a distinguished track record across the securities finance and trading ecosystem. What drew you to lead Citi’s securities finance franchise at this pivotal moment, and what impact do you aim to establish in this role?
With a career that spans nearly 25 years in securities finance, I have had the privilege of sitting on several different sides of this business — first, at the world's largest asset manager, and then at two of the world's largest custody banks. That vantage point has given me a fairly unique perspective: I have watched investor needs evolve in real time, catalysing a proliferation of new investment products across both public and private markets; I have seen how shifting regulatory posture can accelerate or completely reset the pace of market structure change; and I have witnessed how technology innovation reshapes everything it touches from trading, to collateral, to the client experience itself.
What drew me to Citi is a combination of timing and ambition. As an example, Citi Investor Services recently launched Custody+, which Chris Cox, head of Investor Services, describes as delivering a banking experience to clients that is as easy as “upgrading your iPhone, which happens overnight, seamlessly”.
That is not a tagline: it is a signal of a firm that is genuinely investing in innovation. Markets are moving toward always-on, near real-time settlement, continuous trading, and financing needs that will not wait overnight. Clients increasingly expect their experience to match the immediacy they are accustomed to everywhere else in their lives.
Very few firms have the scale, the balance sheet, and the client franchise to actually lead through that shift rather than just react to it, and Citi is one of them. Having seen this industry from the asset manager seat and the custodian seat, I understand both what clients are asking for and what it takes operationally to deliver it at scale. I see Citi as a firm genuinely poised for growth, with the appetite to build rather than simply maintain.
You will hear that always-on thread runs through nearly everything we discuss today, including how we are thinking about the role that tokenised securities will play in digital collateral mobility, moving beyond collateral that otherwise sits idle once it is pledged.
What I want to build at Citi is a business that the industry benchmarks against, where we are not just keeping pace with that always-on shift. We want to be the firm that defines it. Where our data, our trading capabilities, and our collateral and liquidity infrastructure are so tightly integrated that clients experience speed, transparency, and optionality as the default, not the exception.
From a trading desk perspective, how has the securities finance market evolved over the past year, and how is Citi's trading franchise positioned to capture opportunity amid this shifting landscape?
For specials-focused lending, new markets continue to add significant opportunity. Last year’s relaxation of Korea’s short sell ban is such an example, and we look forward to expanding our equity lending business across new markets and opportunities.
In funding-focused lending, where counterparty risk and balance sheet efficiency matter most, tools like central clearing, pledged collateral, and excess margin/asset segregation models are increasingly important.
We are particularly excited about Cboe's securities financing transactions (SFT) central clearing model, which continues to expand across jurisdictions, asset classes, and markets. We are also seeing novel solutions gain traction. Agented prime and agented repo structures, for example, allow borrowers to operate outside of a principal construct, eliminating balance sheet usage, and end-user, peer-to-peer high-quality liquid asset (HQLA) repo counterparties to connect without dealer capacity constraints.
Looking ahead, Basel III endgame will also create new optimisation opportunities through correlation and diversification within netting sets, while evolving collateral preferences under the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) Rule 15c3-3 exemptive relief remains a key consideration for how solutions are built. Citi's tailored approach to trading positions us well in meeting this growing need for customisation.
As the industry moves toward more automated, data-driven trading and real-time inventory management, how is technology reshaping the way your desk operates, and where do you see the greatest opportunity for innovation in trading execution over the next few years?
As the data landscape shifts, the next frontier is AI-enabled analytics and controlled agentic workflows. Agents can create scale for trading teams, taking on tasks supporting complex analytical and operational workflows beyond flow trading, including supporting tax optimisation for exchange traded funds (ETFs), pricing voluntary corporate actions, and AI-driven cash investment portfolio optimisation within client mandates and defined risk parameters.
We are also exploring leveraging machine learning and AI for predictive portfolio insights, estimates, and performance benchmarking. The opportunity is to connect these capabilities into faster, better-informed decisions and more efficient, scalable trading. As we move from assistance toward action, validation, traceability, and human oversight proportionate to risk are central to the design.
Counterparty engagement and negotiated trading require particular care: any extension into execution will remain within approved permissions, limits, and controls, with clear human accountability. The ambition is to scale intelligence and execution discipline together.
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) adoption is another area of potential, helping the industry navigate compressed settlement cycles and extended trading hours while reducing fails, contract breaks, and friction from pre-collateralisation. It is an exciting time to be shaping the deployment of this emerging technology.
Turning to performance on the ground. Citi Securities Finance has maintained sustained momentum across institutional client segments while broadening its global footprint. How is Citi's client coverage model driving outperformance for major institutional lenders?
At the core of Citi Securities Finance’s sustained momentum is a consultative, high-touch coverage model operating on a follow-the-sun framework globally. This strategic partnership approach has driven marquee client success, yielding all-time high revenues and balances for major public pension systems, and consistent benchmark outperformance in custom equity lending programmes for sovereign institutions.
To further empower pensions, sovereign entities, insurers, and asset managers, Citi continues to deliver client-centric solutions, including real-time API integrations, expanded non-cash collateral flexibility, and tailored liquidity fund reinvestment vehicles.
We are committed to expanding this client-first footprint into high-opportunity regions, capturing momentum in lendable inventory and average borrow value across relevant markets worldwide, and we are looking forward to what is next.
On the other end of the spectrum, retail securities lending has rapidly evolved into a multi-billion-dollar liquidity driver. How is Citi bridging the gap between this growing retail supply and institutional borrow demand?
Retail securities lending has rapidly evolved into a significant revenue and liquidity driver for both Citi and the market at large. To bridge retail supply with institutional borrowing demand, Citi’s agency lending programme for retail assets provides end-to-end automated infrastructure tailored for retail brokers, wealth managers, and private banks.
Backed by Citi’s global custody footprint of over 100 markets including 62 proprietary branches, balance sheet strength, and institutional governance including daily overcollateralisation, borrower indemnification, and granular regulatory reporting, the programme enables financial institutions to turn dormant retail portfolios into scalable, transparent, and risk-managed yield generators.
Shifting to collateral — a space undergoing significant transformation amid rising regulatory requirements and liquidity pressures. Is Citi digitising the collateral lifecycle, and what innovations are you introducing across the product landscape?
We have seen positive momentum in our collateral management business across a broad range of clients in over 20 countries.
That growth is being matched by a broader shift in how the business operates: Citi is digitising the collateral lifecycle and connecting collateral management, agency securities lending, and cash reinvestment through a single optimisation engine designed to put idle assets to work, while keeping counterparty exposure and disciplined oversight at the core of every decision. Citi is also continuing to invest in and evolve its Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) capabilities as the regulatory landscape grows more complex.
That same forward-looking momentum extends to how collateral itself will move in the future. With securities tokenisation and options for digital collateralisation, the industry is already seeing use cases that support atomic, round-the-clock settlement. Citi is well positioned to evolve its securities finance offering for this digital world and I am excited to progress the agenda for our clients.
Zooming out to data and AI more broadly, how is Citi modernising its data foundation across Securities Finance and Investor Services, and what opportunities do you see for Generative AI and autonomous agentic workflows?
Our strategy across the broader Investor Services business is clear: build a single, trusted data foundation and use it to reduce friction and improve outcomes for our clients. That means moving away from fragmented, manual, siloed data toward a model that is unified, governed, and permissioned, so clients and our own teams can access the information they are entitled to from a consistent, trusted foundation.
We are reducing reliance on batch processing and manual touchpoints that slow decisions, bringing information closer to the moment it is needed. We see this as a defining shift for the next phase of our business: secure, on-demand data access, built to scale and designed for self-service, with data quality, privacy, and governance embedded from the outset. That lays the groundwork for generative AI and agentic workflows to be designed into the operating model, rather than bolted onto it.
This strategy is already delivering value, and we are expanding it deliberately. Clients are already onboarded onto our data and API capabilities, and we are scaling that footprint further. By connecting our data through a unified foundation, modern APIs and governed cloud-sharing capabilities, we are reducing avoidable reconciliation and operational friction, with near-real-time access where supported.
Our recently launched enhanced ‘Market Guide in Custody’ demonstrates this direction through AI-powered search and summaries that deliver trusted market information as more actionable client intelligence. On the securities lending side, timely inventory and restriction data gives clients sharper intelligence for pricing and inventory decisions.
The next opportunity is to build on this foundation with controlled agentic workflows that surface inventory signals, flag pricing anomalies, and recommend or execute authorised actions within defined limits.
Working closely with our technology, risk, and control partners, we are building toward more proactive, intelligent decision-making without weakening accountability. We are not just modernising data infrastructure. We are combining Citi’s network and trusted data and AI solutions to help clients operate with greater speed, confidence, and resilience.
Image: Patty Hostin 
