A key Citi transformation MD leaves for problematic payments fintech

It's not just banks that are in need of transformation, fintechs sometimes need it too. A Citi transformation MD with 25 years of experience in banking has left for a fintech (of sorts) which faces similar tech problems to the big bank he's coming from.

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Igor Shuli has joined Early Warning Financial as its chief operations officer of technology. He was most recently Citi's global head of technology transformation and regulatory deliverables. In that role, he says his remit included data governance, compliance and controls automation and that he worked on 2,200 of the bank's applications. Prior to that, he was a Wells Fargo MD and had stints at both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan

Shuli's new employer is an odd sort of fintech in that it's over 30 years old and is bank-owned. It began as a deposit risk management firm but its most recent marquee product is Zelle, a peer-to-peer payments service released in 2017 to compete with the likes of CashApp.

Thanks to Zelle, Early Warning is in hot water. In a statement from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last December, the fintech was accused of "fail[ing] to fix glaring flaws in their systems even as hundreds of thousands of customers filed complaints about fraud." The body is suing Early Warning, as well as three banks with ownership of the fintech; it's not disclosing how much it is suing for exactly, but states that "over $800 million" has been lost due to Zelle's controls.

Citi has faced its own share of financial penalties over its infrastructure. Last year, it was fined $136m for failing to fix longstanding data issues. In 2020, it was fined $400m for issues with its risk management, data governance and internal controls. The bank is spending over $250m to fix this.

Shuli was directly involved in Citi's data governance overhaul. He claims to have directed a "data governance and accountability campaign" and introduced new frameworks and controls for at least 367 business processes. He reported directly to the global head of transformation, and ran a team of 75 people. This sounds big, but Citi's total transformation team contains 13,000 employees.

Citi's transformation is far from over; less than a third of the bank's legacy apps had been decommissioned by the start of this year, for example.  There have also been various changes in leadership changes atop the initiative, including a confusing alleged demotion of COO Anand Selva. 

Progress has been speeding up, but not at the rate Citi would like. The bank achieved 53% of its transformation milestones in 2024, compared to 80% the year before. As a result, Citi paid smaller bonuses to executive committee members and 250 senior managers. With another senior transformation leader out the door (voluntarily or not) managers may be wary of their bonus prospects for 2026.