'Reimagine the Bank': a $300 million, three-year AI-led overhaul with a $450 million payoff, on the first super-regional to move its whole mainframe to the cloud.
How is Citizens using AI?
Citizens has given its AI strategy a name, a budget and a return: 'Reimagine the Bank', a three-year, roughly $300 million program launched in 2025 to redesign how it serves customers and runs the bank with generative and agentic AI, expected to deliver $450 million of run-rate benefits — and, the bank stresses, not needed to hit its profitability targets. The foundation is unusual for a regional: CIO Michael Ruttledge says Citizens is the first super-regional to move its entire mainframe and every application to the cloud, and it has used generative AI to rewrite legacy code, including a mortgage system moved in six weeks. The results it reports are concrete: CiZi, the mobile assistant, cut app-related call volume 44%; new-account opening time fell by half; coding output is up 10% overall and 55% for engineers using advanced agents; GitHub Copilot's coding agent went to about 800 developers. President Brendan Coughlin, now positioned as the next CEO, says the pace of AI change is 'overwhelming' and that the technology is 'here and present right now'.
Lead bank
Citizens Bank, N.A.
Assets (lead bank, Jun 30, 2026)
$233 billion
Charter
National bank (OCC)
Headquarters
Providence, RI
Flagship platform
CiZi and the cloud-native core
AI leadership
Brendan Coughlin · Michael Ruttledge · Bruce Van Saun · Krish Swamy · Aunoy Banerjee · Mark Valentino · Joanne (Jo) Wyper · Ajay Punia · Karen Swiatocha · Manny Tocco
- Reimagine the Bank: launched 2025, about three years and $300 million, targeting $450 million of run-rate benefits by 2028; CEO Bruce Van Saun says profit goals do not depend on it.
- Cloud-first foundation: 700 applications migrated in four years; the last mainframe being retired — 'no one has done that, not even banks like Capital One', per the CIO.
- Results reported: CiZi cut mobile-related call volume 44%; new-account opening time down 50%; engineering output +10% overall, +55% for engineers on advanced agents; GitHub Copilot's coding agent rolled to ~800 developers, half the engineering staff.
- Legacy rewrite: generative AI converts old code to modern languages — a mortgage system with millions of lines rewritten and moved to the cloud in six weeks.
- Governance in the proxy: the 2026 proxy statement tells shareholders the bank 'will utilize new technologies like artificial intelligence and agentic artificial intelligence to enhance how we serve customers and how we run the bank'.
- Leadership: President Brendan Coughlin runs all business lines and the AI-led overhaul; his July 2026 expanded role positions him as the next CEO.
- Investor-deck milestones: LLMs in the call centre targeting ~25% of calls handled without a human by year-end 2026 and ~50% over time; GenAI for private-company credit research; AI agents re-architecting the back office; a first enterprise-wide AI-chat agent (Q1 and Q2 2026 earnings presentations).
- Benefit path reaffirmed each quarter: ~$100 million pre-tax run-rate by year-end 2026, ~$200 million-plus by 2027, ~$450 million-plus by 2028; implementation costs of $6 million in Q1 and about $7 million in Q2 2026.
- Open AI roles on its careers site include a distinguished engineer for AI security, one for non-human and agentic identity, and a lead product owner for the AI platform (listed below, as of 24 September 2026).
- Models and vendors: staff choose OpenAI, AWS Bedrock or Anthropic models in an internal gen-AI portal; every employee has Microsoft Copilot; in 2024 the CIO said Citizens would not build its own LLM. Coughlin (March 2026): the lead in coding tools moves between Copilot and Claude 'every three weeks'.
- 2024 groundwork: a hackathon yielded over 90 gen-AI ideas, six were pursued and two were live by July 2024 (Copilot for engineers, a contact-centre product assistant); the Copilot pilot showed a 20% productivity boost and a rollout to about 1,000 engineers followed.
- Cost and payback detail (4Q25 deck): about $50 million of one-time implementation costs in 2026 against about $45 million of 2026 benefit; net benefit about $50 million in 2027 and $225 million in 2028; two-thirds of the $450 million is expense (about 5% of the 2025 expense base); about 2% ROTCE uplift in 2028.
- Call-centre mix: about 70% of customer calls are answered overseas by a vendor, and Coughlin says outsourced contracts, not Citizens employees, will be shed first as AI takes calls; about 60% of the roughly 50 initiatives involve advanced technology such as AI.
- Disclosure gap: the 2026 proxy and 10-K give the Board an AI-risk role and name generative AI as a security risk, but neither the Q1 nor Q2 2026 10-Q uses the words AI or artificial intelligence; Reimagine the Bank appears there only as an outside-services cost.
- IP: Google Patents lists two granted machine-learning patents (forecasting, 2023; linked-account behaviour prediction, 2024) and published applications for a data-intelligence platform (2024) and an AI-driven relationship-orchestration platform (2025) assigned to Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
What is CiZi and the cloud-native core?
CiZi, the AI assistant in the Citizens mobile app, has cut mobile-banking call volume by 44%. Behind it, CIO Michael Ruttledge's team migrated 700 applications over four years and is unplugging the last mainframe — 'the first super-regional bank to move its entire mainframe and every business application into the cloud' — which is what lets generative and agentic AI run across operations under the Reimagine the Bank program.[2][1]
What AI partnerships and patents does Citizens Financial Group have?
Citizens names Microsoft (Copilot and Azure), GitHub, AWS and Infosys as technology partners, and lets staff choose OpenAI, Anthropic or AWS Bedrock models in its own portal. Its CIO said in 2024 it would not build its own large language models. Google Patents lists two granted machine-learning patents (forecasting, 2023; behaviour prediction across linked accounts, 2024) and published applications for a data-intelligence platform and an AI-driven relationship-orchestration platform, all assigned to Citizens Financial Group, Inc. No GPU vendor, model-training spend or AI-lab contract terms are public.[32][3][4][35][47][48][49][50]
| Item | What it is | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft (Copilot, Azure) | Copilot for all employees; Azure is one of two main clouds; 2024 Copilot pilot lifted engineer productivity 20% | In production | 2025-11-20[4][31][3] |
| GitHub Copilot and coding agent | About 800 engineers, half the software staff, some on the coding agent | In production | 2025-12-01[3] |
| AWS (cloud, Bedrock) | Primary cloud with Azure; Bedrock models offered in the internal gen-AI portal | In production | 2025-12-01[3][34] |
| OpenAI and Anthropic models | Selectable in the internal portal; Coughlin cites Copilot and Claude leapfrogging in coding tools | In production | 2026-03-27[3][8] |
| Infosys | Five-year technology partner; March 2025 expansion to AI-led platforms and data-centre exit using Infosys Topaz | Ongoing | 2025-03-12[35] |
| Kyndryl, FIS, Equinix | Mainframe moved to Kyndryl zCloud; core upgrade with FIS; Equinix as network hub to AWS and Azure | Migrating | 2025-12-01[3] |
| MongoDB Atlas on AWS | Database under the cloud fraud-management platform | In production | 2025-02-27[34] |
| US 11,803,793 B2 | Automated data forecasting using machine learning | Granted | 2023-10-31[47] |
| US 11,948,190 B2 | Smart learning systems linking multiple data accounts, predicting user behaviour with machine learning | Granted | 2024-04-02[48] |
| US 2024/0152992 A1 | Data intelligence platform that runs machine-learning models ahead of user requests | Published application | 2024-05-09[49] |
| US 2025/0150457 A1 | AI-driven integration platform and user-adaptive interface for business relationship orchestration | Published application | 2025-05-08[50] |
| Digital Butler | Commercial banking virtual assistant, patent granted for personalisation (patent number not verified) | Granted | 2024-03-01[33] |
What has Citizens done on AI, and when?
- Sep 29, 2026
Q4 2026 Business Pulse: small-business AI spending rising[29]
Citizens' survey finds 30% of businesses plan to increase Q4 tech/AI spending (up from 23% in Q3); 94% of businesses using AI regularly across multiple functions have cut or eliminated spending on external services, most on marketing (60%), data analysis/reporting (39%) and bookkeeping (38%); heavy AI users are far more optimistic on revenue (74% vs 54% overall) and hiring (44% vs 22%).
- Sep 29, 2026
Coughlin: engineers now 30-40% more productive with AI[28]
American Banker reports the average Citizens engineer is 30% to 40% more productive than a year earlier under the three-year, $300 million Reimagine the Bank project; Coughlin says the role is evolving toward engineers overseeing multiple AI agents, and that AI-existential-risk warnings have 'not really' changed the project's direction.
- Sep 23, 2026
Coughlin plays down AI-bubble risk to the bank[27]
President Brendan Coughlin tells American Banker that even an AI slowdown would not derail Citizens because non-AI sectors of the US economy remain solid.
- Sep 14, 2026
No M&A 'distraction' from Reimagine the Bank[24]
Van Saun at the Barclays conference: nothing to buy would make a dramatic difference while the private bank and the AI program run.
- Sep 2, 2026
Unifying business, private banking and wealth[10]
Product, technology and geographic investments to spin the 'massive flywheel' faster.
- Aug 3, 2026
Q2 2026 10-Q names Reimagine the Bank but carries no AI text[46]
The quarterly report attributes higher outside-services expense to costs of the Reimagine the Bank programme; neither the Q1 nor Q2 2026 10-Q contains the words AI, artificial intelligence, generative or agentic.
- Jul 30, 2026
CDAO Swamy: LLMs as a translator for customer intent; models inside the bank's VPC[7]
On an American Banker panel Krish Swamy said LLMs map what callers say to a small set of intents, that some models run inside Citizens' own VPC, that chatbots answer questions but do not yet execute transactions, and that commercial underwriters share a Copilot prompt library.
- Jul 24, 2026
Van Saun on going 'big' with AI[23]
A three-year push to see how AI could improve each core activity, 50 initiatives, run like an airport control tower.
- Jul 16, 2026
Q2 2026: AI agents in the back office, a 10x engineering pilot[17][20][22][21][45]
Back-office re-architecture with AI agents orchestrating end-to-end workflows, AI case classification, AI in credit-card contact centres and a first enterprise-wide AI-chat agent; about $7 million of program costs in the quarter.
- Jul 8, 2026
- Jun 11, 2026
Coughlin on AI deposit optimisers: no 'mass exodus'[44]
Asked about AI tools that move cash to higher yields, Coughlin said the average low-cost retail checking balance is about $3,500 and unlikely to be optimised, and that direct banks hold about 12% to 13% of US deposits.
- Jun 1, 2026
The mainframe goes: CIO's cloud-first claim[2]
700 applications migrated; CiZi −44% call volume; +55% output for engineers on advanced agents.
- Apr 16, 2026
Q1 2026 call: reimagine programme self-funded by non-AI savings[43]
Coughlin said over $30 million of vendor savings were already projected for 2026 and facility closures offset early investment, and that 25% of calls answered by non-humans should arrive in summer and early autumn; AI coding tests showed 30% productivity gains and in some cases 5x to 10x.
- Apr 16, 2026
- Apr 15, 2026
Branches: AI search for staff today, banker prep and next-best-action tools weighed[42]
The head of branch distribution transformation said staff already use AI to look up policy and procedure, AI is being piloted as the voice behind the credit-card phone line, and tools that summarise a client before a meeting are under consideration.
- Mar 27, 2026
- Mar 9, 2026
Proxy: Board oversees a 'measured approach to AI'[41]
The DEF 14A says the Board ensures a measured approach to AI within a governance structure with guardrails, that AI-related risk is managed under the enterprise risk framework, and that directors received AI and generative AI training in 2025.
- Mar 5, 2026
Proxy statement: AI and agentic AI in how the bank is run[11]
Reimagine the Bank described to shareholders.
- Mar 3, 2026
2025 Annual Review: first super-regional fully in the cloud; CiZi use up 40%[40]
The shareholder review says Citizens became the first super-regional bank fully in the cloud in 2025, set up a transformation office for Reimagine the Bank, and that CiZi usage rose 40% year over year in 4Q25.
- Feb 12, 2026
10-K flags generative AI and LLMs as a security risk[14]
Risk factors name generative AI and large language models among evolving threats, and AI as a change that could transform how banks offer products.
- Jan 26, 2026
Business banking: AI to find opportunities, not replace bankers[39]
The business-banking COO said AI would focus on finding opportunities with customers and prospects and that recruits now ask which AI tools they will use.
- Jan 21, 2026
Q4 2025 deck: ~50 initiatives in five themes[15][18]
Software productivity with AI, AI fraud detection, an 'AI Powered Banker' and KYC/AML streamlining among them; two-thirds of the benefit from expenses, about 5% of the 2025 expense base; call-centre modernisation and voice AI discussed on the call.
- Jan 21, 2026
Tech overhaul laid out: $450 million of run-rate benefits[5]
Three-year revamp; not baked into return guidance.
- Dec 16, 2025
The Banker's US Bank of the Year[25]
The award cites AI-driven productivity tools, integrated developer platforms and digital account opening.
- Dec 1, 2025
Inside the plan: 47 use cases in execution[3]
Ruttledge: 'a lot of proof of concepts… where there's manual processes today that we think we can automate.'
- Nov 20, 2025
GitHub Copilot's coding agent to ~800 developers[4]
Half the software developers; fintech partners rewriting legacy systems for the cloud.
- Oct 15, 2025
Q3 2025 deck: agentic AI call centre and agentic infrastructure on the Reimagine list[38]
The deck listed an agentic-AI-enabled call centre, building agentic AI infrastructure, AI-driven pricing, credit and collections, AI-driven fraud, KYC and AML tools, and further upskilling of AI/ML talent, with details promised for January.
- Aug 6, 2025
'First inning' of AI in business banking[9]
AI not yet in the online banking platform; exploring applications, per the head of business banking.
- Jul 17, 2025
Van Saun: 'reimagining the bank with AI in mind'[3][36][37]
The objective, set out on the Q2 2025 call, is to redesign how the bank serves customers and runs itself with gen and agentic AI; Van Saun told American Banker 'everything is fair game' and named customer service, fraud, AML and loan servicing as targets.
- Mar 12, 2025
Infosys collaboration widened to AI-led transformation[35]
Infosys said it would use its Topaz AI offering to help Citizens build cloud-native platforms and exit its data centres; the two had worked together for five years.
- Feb 27, 2025
Fraud platform rebuilt in the cloud with new models[34]
A head of fraud risk said the cloud fraud-management platform on MongoDB Atlas on AWS had handled about 80% of claims volume since 2023, and that new detection models beat the industry detection rate; more than 80% of applications were in the cloud.
- Sep 9, 2024
No in-house LLM: AWS and Microsoft models[32]
Ruttledge said Citizens had no plan to build its own large language models and would use best-in-class models from its providers; gen AI for documentation, code conversion and testing gave a 10% to 20% productivity gain.
- Jul 26, 2024
CIO: 90 gen-AI ideas, six pursued, two in production; Copilot pilot lifts productivity 20%[31]
A hackathon produced over 90 ideas. The two live uses were Microsoft Copilot for engineers (pilot showed a 20% productivity boost; rollout to about 1,000 engineers planned) and a gen-AI product assistant for contact-centre staff. A human validates the code and the answers.
- Jun 4, 2024
Van Saun: 'you have to walk before you run' with AI[30]
At a Bernstein conference the CEO said Citizens was putting policies and governance in place first, called customer bots 'pretty advanced', and named code assistance and fraud detection as other targets.
- Mar 1, 2024
Digital Butler patent granted[33]
Citizens Commercial's virtual assistant won a patent for its personalisation; the bank said 700 clients chose it over the call centre and 30,000 used it weekly.
Where does Citizens use AI today?
| System | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| CiZi[2][12] | Mobile-app AI assistant; call volume down 44%. | In production | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Coding agents[4][2] | GitHub Copilot's agent for ~800 developers; +55% output for advanced-agent users. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Legacy code conversion[4] | Gen AI rewrites old code for the cloud; mortgage system in six weeks. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Frontline AI tools[2] | Account opening time halved for frontline staff. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Payment-fraud defence[13] | Head of fraud on AI deepfakes, BEC and bank impersonation. | In production | Fraud detection |
| LLM call-centre automation[16][17][19] | Targeting ~25% of calls handled without human interaction by year-end 2026 and ~50% over time; AI also in the credit-card contact centres. | Rolling out | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Back-office AI agents[17] | AI agents orchestrating end-to-end workflows to cut manual tasks; AI case classification for client inquiries. | Pilot | Generative & agentic AI |
| GenAI credit research and monitoring[16][17] | Automating credit research and portfolio monitoring of private companies; an AI pilot for commercial prospecting, deal research and pitch creation. | Pilot | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| Enterprise AI-chat agent[17] | The first enterprise-wide AI-chat agent, starting with HR content for colleagues. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI in the 10-K risk factors[14] | Generative AI and LLMs as an information-security risk; AI as a potentially transformative competitive change. | In production | Model risk management |
| Business Pulse survey research on client AI adoption[29] | Quarterly small-business survey tracking AI spending and adoption among Citizens' commercial clients. | In production | AI governance (general) |
| AI public-record risk profiles for AML[1] | Coughlin: AI scans public-record information on incoming clients and returns a summary risk profile; work under way in March 2026. | Pilot | AML / KYC |
| Agentic fraud-claims and AML checks[3][34] | Fraud platforms rebuilt in the cloud with machine learning for suspicious-activity reports and security checks; agentic AI piloted for straight-through processing of small-dollar claims, with AML checks to follow. | Pilot | Fraud detection |
| Contact-centre assistant (Sage and product suggestions)[3][31] | Gen-AI knowledge tool for call-centre staff and an on-screen product suggestion used by more than half of customer service representatives; call resolution time down. | In production | Customer-facing chatbots |
| AI-Powered Banker[1][15] | Starting in the commercial bank: AI assembles internal and external data into a client 'health report' for bankers, then spreads to other job families. | Pilot | Generative & agentic AI |
| Complaint classification and automated call QC[3][17] | Agentic AI classifies complaints and drafts responses; gen AI piloted to review 100% of call transcripts for tone and accuracy against 5% reviewed by people today. | Pilot | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI lending onboarding platform[3] | Built for student lending, parts reused for home equity and planned for credit cards, so new scores such as cash-flow underwriting deploy faster. | Rolling out | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| Engineers as supervisors of coding agents[8][28] | Citizens is moving engineers from writing code to managing code-writing agents; average engineer productivity up 30% to 40% in a year. | Rolling out | AI-generated code & coding agents |
| Vendor consolidation and outsourcing exit[8][43] | Outsourced call-centre and engineering contracts to be shed first; one customer-chat platform to replace several; over $30 million of vendor savings projected for 2026. | Rolling out | Third-party & vendor AI |
| Models hosted inside the bank's VPC[7] | For some use cases Citizens runs models in its own cloud network so nothing leaves its firewall, trading engineering effort for control. | In production | Data & privacy |
Use-case links open the tracker's rules-by-use-case matrix: which documents govern each system type.
Which AI vendors and fintechs does Citizens work with?
| Company | What Citizens uses it for | Status | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Every employee has Microsoft Copilot; a 2024 hackathon pilot for engineers showed a 20% productivity boost before a roughly 1,000-engineer rollout. | In production | Enterprise AI assistants |
| ChatGPT Enterprise (OpenAI) | Internal gen-AI portal lets staff choose OpenAI models alongside AWS Bedrock and Anthropic. | In production | Enterprise AI assistants |
| Claude (Anthropic) | Internal gen-AI portal lets staff choose Anthropic's Claude alongside OpenAI and AWS Bedrock models; the president says the lead in coding tools moves between Copilot and Claude 'every three weeks.' | In production | Enterprise AI assistants |
| Amazon Bedrock (AWS) | AWS is a primary cloud alongside Azure, with Bedrock models offered in the internal gen-AI portal. | In production | Enterprise AI assistants |
| GitHub Copilot | GitHub Copilot's coding agent rolled out to about half the bank's software developers, 800 people. | In production | Enterprise AI assistants |
Each vendor and fintech page cites the source for the relationship, and vendor pages list products, pricing and other bank customers. Compare AI tools for banks by category, or read the fintech and neobank AI dossiers.
What has Citizens disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Reimagine the Bank | ≈ $300 million over ≈ 3 years; $450 million run-rate benefit[1][5] | Mar 27, 2026 |
| CiZi effect on call volume | −44%[2] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| Engineering output | +10% overall; +55% with advanced agents[2] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| Developers with coding agents | ≈ 800 (half)[4] | Nov 20, 2025 |
| Applications migrated to cloud | 700 in four years[2] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| Total assets | $227.9 billion[26] | Mar 31, 2026 |
| Reimagine pre-tax run-rate benefit path | ≈ $100 million (YE2026); ≈ $200 million+ (YE2027); ≈ $450 million+ (YE2028)[17] | Jul 16, 2026 |
| Calls handled without a human (target) | ≈ 25% by YE2026; ≈ 50% over time[16] | Apr 16, 2026 |
| Reimagine implementation costs | $6 million (Q1 2026); ≈ $7 million (Q2 2026)[19][21] | Jun 30, 2026 |
| Engineering productivity in AI coding pilots | 30% to 10x (Q1 2026 call); 10x expected (Q2 2026 deck)[19][17] | Jul 16, 2026 |
| Average engineer productivity gain (Reimagine the Bank) | 30%-40% more productive than a year earlier[28] | Sep 29, 2026 |
| Reimagine 2026 one-time costs vs benefit | ≈ $50 million of implementation costs; ≈ $45 million pre-tax benefit in FY2026[15] | Jan 21, 2026 |
| Reimagine net benefit before reinvestment | ≈ $50 million (2027); ≈ $225 million (2028); ≈ 2% ROTCE uplift in 2028[15] | Jan 21, 2026 |
| Reimagine initiatives | ≈ 50 (47 sized by March 2026); ≈ 60% involve advanced technology such as AI[5][1] | Mar 27, 2026 |
| Customer calls answered overseas by a vendor | ≈ 70%; headcount ≈ 17,400[8] | Mar 27, 2026 |
| Employees with gen-AI training | > 90%[2] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| CiZi usage growth | +40% year over year (4Q25)[40] | Mar 3, 2026 |
| Cloud move results | 25 data centres closed; infrastructure cost −10% to −15%; incidents −78%; ≈ $45 million annualised savings[3][2] | Jun 1, 2026 |
| 2024 Copilot engineer pilot | +20% productivity; ≈ 1,000 engineers planned; 90+ gen-AI ideas, 6 pursued, 2 live[31] | Jul 26, 2024 |
| Customer-service call transcripts reviewed | 5% by people today; 100% in a gen-AI pilot[3] | Dec 1, 2025 |
“The technology is in a spot at the moment where it's not hopes and dreams. It's here and present right now, and we're leveraging it.”[1]
Brendan Coughlin · President · Mar 27, 2026
“We are the first super-regional bank to move its entire mainframe and every business application into the cloud.”[2]
Michael Ruttledge · CIO · Jun 1, 2026
“We have our neck out on the guillotine a little bit, but that focuses attention when you put a public target out there.”[23]
Bruce Van Saun · Chairman and CEO · Jul 24, 2026
“Even outside the AI economy, the non-AI sectors of the U.S. are still solid. So even with an AI slowdown — if it happened, which I don't expect it will — it could take a little bit of the air out of the balloon, but the rest of the U.S. economy is still on pretty solid ground.”[27]
Brendan Coughlin · President · Sep 23, 2026
“the average engineer at Citizens is now 30% to 40% more productive than they had been a year ago.”[28]
Brendan Coughlin · President · Sep 29, 2026
“Contrary to some headlines, we are not seeing AI fatigue. In fact, we may still be in the early innings of AI helping small businesses play bigger than their size.”[29]
Mark Valentino · Head of Business Banking · Sep 29, 2026
“Everything is fair game.”[36]
Bruce Van Saun · Chairman and CEO · Jul 17, 2025
“This gives us the freedom to adopt different ones where we think someone's got a leap on the market and we want to get there.”[3]
Michael Ruttledge · CIO · Dec 1, 2025
“These things are becoming obsolete in matters of months, not years.”[8]
Brendan Coughlin · President · Mar 27, 2026
“just be very transparent with them. I think transparency matters.”[7]
Krish Swamy · Chief Data and Analytics Officer · Jul 30, 2026
“We're not rushing into this.”[31]
Michael Ruttledge · CIO · Jul 26, 2024
Who runs AI at Citizens?
Brendan CoughlinLinkedIn ↗
President; leads all business lines and the Reimagine the Bank program[6][1]
Michael RuttledgeLinkedIn ↗
Bruce Van Saun
Chairman and CEO[5]
Krish SwamyLinkedIn ↗
Chief Data and Analytics Officer[7]
Aunoy Banerjee
Chief Financial Officer; reports the Reimagine the Bank benefit path to investors[20]
Mark Valentino
Head of Business Banking[29]
Joanne (Jo) Wyper
Executive Vice President, head of operations at Citizens Commercial Bank (2024); spoke on digital-assistant ROI at Bank Automation Summit 2025[33]
Ajay Punia
Head of fraud risk and transmissions engineering (February 2025); runs the cloud fraud-management platform[34]
Karen Swiatocha
EVP, head of branch distribution transformation; owns AI for branch staff[42]
Manny Tocco
COO and head of business banking strategy; AI to find client opportunities[39]
What AI roles is Citizens hiring for?
Data as of · 6 AI-titled postings · read from Citizens's own careers site, re-checked weekly
6 open AI-related postings on Citizens's careers site as of Oct 25, 2026. A snapshot of current openings, not a source: postings close. Compare with other banks on which banks are hiring for AI.
Distinguished Engineer - Non Human & Agentic Identity
United States · posted
Principal Data Scientist- Decisioning
United States · posted
United States · posted
Principal Security Engineer - AI Data Protection
United States · posted
Principal Security Engineer -DLP AI Security Automation
United States · posted
Sr Data Scientist- Wealth Management
Columbus, OH, United States · posted
Which regulators govern Citizens's AI?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| OCC | National bank; the revised model risk guidance and the OCC's gen-AI posture apply to a program this broad. | OCC Bulletin 2026-13 OCC Semiannual Risk Perspective, Spring 2026 |
| CFPB | CiZi is a consumer chatbot and account opening is automated; UDAAP, the chatbot spotlight and ECOA apply. | CFPB Chatbots in Consumer Finance (issue spotlight, 2023) ECOA / Regulation B adverse action (15 U.S.C. 1691(d); 12 CFR 1002.9) |
| FinCEN | Automating 85% of KYC/AML/BSA decisions at onboarding sits inside the BSA/AML program rule. | 2026 AML/CFT Program Proposed Rule |
| Federal Reserve | Cloud, Infosys and GitHub are third-party relationships under interagency guidance. | SR 23-4 |
| NY DFS | New York expansion and Part 500 obligations for DFS-licensed activities. | 23 NYCRR Part 500 |
Side by side: SR 11-7 vs SR 26-2 · OCC vs CFPB on AI lending · PRA SS1/23 vs SR 26-2 · MAS AI Risk Management Guidelines vs SR 26-2 · all comparisons.
What does the public record suggest about Citizens's AI strategy?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice.
01
The cloud claim is the real differentiator
Retiring the last mainframe removes the constraint that keeps most regionals' AI at the edges. If the claim holds, Citizens can run agents on core processes years before peers.
02
Automating 85% of onboarding decisions concentrates BSA/AML risk in a vendor rule-set
The efficiency is real; the question examiners will ask is who owns the decision logic and how exceptions are reviewed.
03
A program 'not needed to hit targets' is a hedge that can turn into a promise
Keeping $450 million out of guidance protects credibility now; investors will expect it to show up by 2028.
04
The next CEO is the AI program's owner
Coughlin's expanded role ties succession to the overhaul's success — an unusually direct link between AI execution and leadership.
Where does the Citizens record go deeper?
5 topic pages under this profile, each answering one question from the same sourced record.
- What is Citizens Financial Group's AI strategy?
- What AI partnerships and patents does Citizens Financial Group have?
- What is CiZi, and how is Citizens using AI assistants?
- What technology stack does Citizens run its AI on?
- What proprietary AI has Citizens built in-house?
- Has Citizens Financial Group had a publicly reported AI incident?
Which leader rankings does Citizens appear in?
8 of the computed leaders rankings include Citizens, each ranked from the same sourced bank pages.
How does Citizens compare with its peers?
- How does Citizens Financial Group compare with its peers on AI and technology?
- Citizens Financial Group competitors and alternatives, by business line
Its peer group on this site, by business model and size:
What is Citizens' Reimagine the Bank program?
Reimagine the Bank is Citizens Financial Group's three-year, roughly $300 million initiative, launched in 2025, to redesign how it serves customers and runs the bank using generative and agentic AI. The bank expects about $450 million of run-rate benefits by 2028 and says its profitability targets do not depend on them. President Brendan Coughlin leads it.
How much of Citizens' call-centre volume will AI handle?
Citizens told investors in April 2026 that it is incorporating large-language-model functionality into call-centre operations, targeting about 25% of calls handled without human interaction by the end of 2026 and about 50% over time. In July 2026 it added AI tools in its credit-card contact centres.
What is CiZi?
CiZi is the AI-powered assistant built into the Citizens mobile app. It walks customers through tasks such as updating information, checking balances and reporting lost cards, and the bank says it has reduced mobile-banking-related call volume by 44%.
Who leads AI at Citizens Financial Group?
Citizens has no chief AI officer. President Brendan Coughlin sponsors and runs Reimagine the Bank, the three-year AI-led programme; CEO Bruce Van Saun sets the target. CIO Michael Ruttledge, who also heads enterprise technology and security, delivers the engineering and cloud work. Chief Data and Analytics Officer Krish Swamy speaks for data and contact-centre AI; CFO Aunoy Banerjee reports the benefit path. Line owners include Jo Wyper (commercial operations), Karen Swiatocha (branch transformation), Manny Tocco (business banking) and Ajay Punia (fraud risk), per 2024 to 2026 reporting.
Which AI models and vendors does Citizens use?
Ruttledge said in September 2024 that Citizens would not build its own large language models and would use those of its cloud providers, AWS and Microsoft. By December 2025 its internal gen-AI portal let staff pick OpenAI, AWS Bedrock or Anthropic models. All employees have Microsoft Copilot and about 800 engineers use GitHub Copilot, some with its coding agent. Infosys has been the main technology partner since 2020 and widened its AI work in March 2025; Kyndryl hosts the mainframe and FIS supplies the core.
How does Citizens govern its AI use?
The 2026 proxy says the Board ensures a measured approach to AI inside a governance structure with guardrails, manages AI risk under the enterprise risk framework, and trained directors on AI and generative AI in 2025. Ideas go to an in-house GenAI council. In 2024 Ruttledge kept a human validating code and customer answers, and in 2026 Swamy said chatbots answer questions but do not yet execute transactions. Neither 2026 10-Q uses the word AI.
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