Jane Fraser: AI Helps Employees Reinvent Themselves at Citi

The debate continues across the world's boardrooms as to whether AI will remove jobs or create more opportunities for employees and their organisations.

Many leaders at the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual meeting in Davos from 19 to 23 January, including Accenture’s Julie Sweet and Saleforce’s Marc Benioff, highlighted the importance of training employees to understand AI and work alongside it.

Speaking with the Washington Post at the meeting, Jane Fraser, Citigroup CEO, acknowledged that AI has the potential to do both, but it’s all about training.

“AI has the potential to make tremendous changes,” she said. “It’s going to create huge numbers of new jobs that we can’t even imagine what they are today. It will change the nature of what people do every day.”

Jane continued to say that it’s impossible to say whether “puts and takes are going to coincide”, but that her employees “should be as much in the driving seat as possible."

She said: “We’re encouraging our people saying, not that AI is going to take your job away but, someone using AI is probably going to be better at your job than you are.”

How is AI implemented at Citigroup?

To establish the use of AI at the American multinational investment bank, Jane said “we put in a set of ethical principles” when the software was first introduced at the firm in 2019.

She said: “I like principles to help guide decision-making because I think it's hard to have entirely rules-based to guide people”, adding that there is emphasis on guiding employees as human spirits that won’t allow for strict rules.

This approach allows employees to use AI to help augment Citigroup's people, Jane said, suggesting a mindset centred around “how did it help them for their job, how did it serve our customers better without being precious about it”.

In her own work, the CEO says she uses AI tools “to help me summarise, getting information gathered more efficiently”.

An AI-capable workforce

When asked how she equips her workforce at Citigroup to implement AI agents, Jane said that everyone needs to train and learn how to use them.

“It will help them in life as well as at work, so that’s why we started having mandatory training for everyone,” she said. “Some people can get intimidated by the tools, so let’s help support getting rid of the myths of intimidation.”

Jane is referring to the company’s top-down AI strategy, focused on embedding the technology into every facet of the bank to modernise its legacy infrastructure, improve operational efficiency and enhance customer experience.

Under the CEO, the firm announced in 2025 that it is equipping over 175,000 employees globally with proprietary AI tools, aiming for an“AI-first” culture.

AI’s effect on employee retention

Jane went on to discuss how many employees can often have decade-long careers at Citigroup across multiple roles. “50% of all of the new job openings that we have at Citi are taken by existing employees,” she said.

Discussing the company's 30-year-old site in South Dakota, she said: “Many of the employees there have been employees for 30 years and they told me they’ve had at least 12 careers in those 30 years.

“I want to stack the odds that we will help people reinvent themselves [using AI] the same way as they have done themselves,” she added.

By giving them control over their AI training, it will encourage them to be “adaptable and be honest and truthful” about new jobs to come.

Jane concluded by saying that some skills will grow and some will go but businesses can adapt by learning how to adjust to this changing landscape.