How Citibank Is Transforming Itself By Partnering With Apple Watch

Of the nine initial apps announced by the new Apple Watch, only one of them was for a bank, Citigroup.

Behind this collaboration is the bank’s aggressive work to fast track its rollout of digital products. “We were trying to transform how we work,” Heather Cox, Citi’s Chief Client Experience, Digital and Marketing Officer for global consumer banking, told me, “And I’m very proud of how we did it.”

Apple announced its developer toolkit in November, which gave Citi and other developers the guidelines needed to create their proprietary apps within 120 days.

“In the past it would probably have taken us at least twice as long, or even more, to implement. This time we were able to adopt a much more aggressive development approach.” says Heather, ”Compared to start-ups, compared to companies like Uber, that can create a new experience every week, our banking culture is more methodic, more like one foot in front of the other. But we want and have to become more nimble.”

The difference this time in developing the app quickly is that Citi applied agile marketing principles, bringing all relevant departments like legal and marketing together from the get-go.

The transformation of Citi’s marketing is widespread, pushing into areas beyond just agile marketing by increasing the bank’s focus on digital solutions, and on design.

Heather remarked that, whether the interface is through desktop, mobile or wearable, she is looking for greater customer experience through design. She mentioned two companies, Nest and Uber, that are of particular inspiration to her, because of their ability to create and refresh their customer experience.

For example, the Apple Watch app includes a transaction alerts that show color-coded visuals of how close users are to their credit limits. This is part of a trend in which personal financial management (PFM) services are making a comeback, and what some believe will become even more personal, wearable devices.

Citi’s app also lets customers see their account balances and recent transactions. They will receive real-time alerts any time they make a payment.

Heather believes that creating experiences for wearables is the start of a broader attempt to deliver more relevant and, more importantly, readily available information to consumers — without making them search for it. The advantage of wearables is that they are readily available for access, as opposed to the smartphone that’s often tucked away in a purse or pocket.

The employment of the Apple Watch app is the latest step toward Citi’s digital goal: that of having a role in customers’ daily lives as a means to develop relationships and a long-term engagement.

Citi expects to learn a lot from the ways its customers use the Apple Watch app. “There are still a lot of question marks around banking and wearables,” Heather said. “But I’m quite bullish on the wearables market.”

The impressive thing about Citigroup marketing is that, while it observes traditional competitors like Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase for operational aspects, it looks beyond its immediate competitors into other brands and categories in order to glean insight into how customers behave and think. That keeps it from group think. 

Another aspect of its transformation is that it is more likely to be accepting of collaborations say, with Zillow or Apple Pay, than previously. Collaboration is essential in today’s business environment where nobody has all the answers.

And finally, I love the fact that Citigroup is using marketing to change internal operations, restructure and improve speed to market. Marketing, because it is closest to the consumer can be the CEOs best asset at breaking silos and drive internal collaboration.