Citizens names Barclays executive as its next finance chief

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Citizens Financial Group has hired a Barclays executive to be its next chief financial officer, filling a key role at the bank as it prepares to embark on a new cost-cutting program.

Aunoy Banerjee, the CFO at Barclays Bank PLC since April 2024, will start in his new role on Oct. 24, the $218.3 billion-asset Citizens announced Tuesday in a press release. He will join the executive management team and report directly to Chairman and CEO Bruce Van Saun.

John Woods, Citizens’ finance chief since 2017, will leave the job on Aug. 15, according to the press release. As previously announced, Woods has been hired to be the next CFO at State Street in Boston. Chris Emerson, Citizens’ head of corporate planning and enterprise finance and a Barclays alum, will serve as Citizens’ interim CFO until Banerjee arrives, the bank said.

Like Woods, Banerjee will oversee financial planning and analysis at the Providence, Rhode Island-based company, as well as business line finance groups; controller functions; investor relations; treasury, tax and capital management functions; and property and procurement.

He will be based in Citizens’ Westwood, Massachusetts office, just outside of Boston.

In the release, Van Saun called Banerjee “a seasoned leader with a broad background and strong record of accomplishment” over a 25-year career. Prior to Barclays, he spent eight years at State Street and nearly 11 years at Citigroup, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Experience “leading finance functions at multiple large financial institutions and overseeing highly complex transformation and optimization programs positions him well to have immediate impact as we execute our ambitious growth and transformation agenda,” Van Saun said.

At London-based Barclays, Banerjee leads a team that covers several lines of business, including U.S. consumer, global corporate and investment banking, and private bank and wealth management.

Barclays did not respond to a request for information about how it plans to fill Banerjee’s role.

Banerjee’s arrival at Citizens will coincide with the bank’s ongoing retooling of its business strategy, including the launch of a private bank nearly two years ago, and a new plan called “Reiminaging the Bank” that will target AI-related efficiencies and employee upskilling.

Read more about Citizens here: https://www.americanbanker.com/organization/citizens-financial

Van Saun introduced the multiyear initiative last month. He said it will involve adopting new technologies such as generative AI and agentic AI, and making changes to the bank’s organizational model as well as its technology and data framework.

He also said the effort will require training Citizens’ employees in new skills and “ultimately serve as our next TOP program,” referring to the bank’s annual cost-cutting effort, known as Tapping Our Potential.

The Reimagining the Bank endeavor will be led by Brendan Coughlin, who was named president of Citizens in April. Coughlin is also the bank’s head of consumer, private banking and wealth.

Banerjee is “a strong hire,” and his experience “suggests he should be quite capable in this position,” Scott Siefers, an analyst at Piper Sandler, wrote Tuesday in a research note.

“His being named CFO fills an important vacancy” at Citizens, “which reduced uncertainty” in the bank’s story, Siefers said.