Wharton to educate Citigroup financial advisers
Citigroup and the Wharton School are launching a joint three-year executive education program called Citi Wharton Global Wealth Institute, scheduled to open in December on the main University City campus and on Wharton's campus in Beijing.
Citigroup and the Wharton School are launching a joint three-year executive education program called Citi Wharton Global Wealth Institute, scheduled to open in December on the main University City campus and on Wharton's campus in Beijing.
The program could enroll as many as 1,000 of Citi's 4,000 or so retail financial advisers around the world over three years, said Rodolfo Castilla, head of Citi's Global Wealth Management Products and Platforms.
Why did the world's largest bank choose Wharton?
"We studied many schools, and the Wharton brand is very strong, although more so in the Western Hemisphere," Castilla said. Citi considered other schools but, with Asia an increasingly strong market for Citi, "Wharton resonates there, as they just opened a big campus in Beijing. Unlike others, they were ready to deliver globally."
The institute will be launched initially in Philadelphia and Beijing, with institutes to open in Latin America and Europe in the near future, said Jennifer Gers, director of Financial and Professional Services at the Wharton School's Aresty Institute of Executive Education.
Wharton has long offered executive education programs such as Private Wealth Management, started in 1999, which has trained roughly 700 people in ultra-high-net-worth families. Those courses generally run over five days. Two years ago, Wharton started another program for financial advisers working in the Latin American market. Those classes are held in Miami in conjunction with the Family Business & Office School, Gers said.
Executive education programs are highly profitable for business schools and help spread brand cache in corporate America's boardrooms and around the globe.
Led by Christopher Geczy, academic director of the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative, the new Citi Wharton Global Wealth Institute is one of the largest programs that the Philadelphia-based business school has undertaken so far. It's unclear how much Citi is paying for the three-year partnership, although Geczy called it a "multimillion dollar program."
Business schools such as INSEAD in France, Stanford in California, Harvard in Cambridge, and NYU's Stern School of Business all offer executive education programs for management ranks.
"Everyone has their own Exec Ed department. Some do custom programs for clients or open enrollment for individuals. It's very competitive," Gers added.
"Our collaboration with Wharton reflects an extraordinary learning commitment by Citi that we believe will serve our relationship managers, and ultimately our clients, well into the future," Jonathan Larsen, Citi's global head of retail banking and mortgage, said in a statement.
Most of the Citi financial advisers eligible for the new program deal with the mass affluent clients, rather than the ultra-high-net-worth clients of a private bank.
Castilla said Citi bankers will learn the curriculum partly on campus, partly online, and will receive some alumni perks in addition to a diploma, such as access to Wharton libraries. Teachers will include Citi senior management, Wharton faculty, and outside portfolio managers.
"They'll be learning 'hard' skills, such as modern portfolio theory, asset allocation, active and passive investing, risk management, spending rates, and the path of wealth across time. That links traditional notions of investment management to what private bankers are doing today," said Geczy.
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