Citi's 388 Greenwich Filing: 248 of 265 Were Bankers, Not Coders

If you were an MD walking out of 388 Greenwich Street this spring, the temptation is to write a resume that blames AI. Do not. The public filing on your building says something very different, and the recruiter you want to reach can pull it up in half a minute.

The right move is a repositioned resume aimed at the desks Citi is still funding.

What the March 10, 2026 WARN filing actually says

Citi's WARN filings for 388 Greenwich show the cuts were commercial banking, not technology. On March 10, 2026, Citi filed three notices at that address: 248 employees at Citibank, N.A., 16 at Citigroup Global Markets, and exactly 1 at Citigroup Technology. Separations start between April 14 and April 18, 2026.

Do the arithmetic. Nearly 94% of the 265 eliminated roles came from the core commercial bank. Citigroup Technology lost a single person. Reuters reported the round primarily hit managing directors and senior employees, with some senior managers already reassigned before the announcement to protect their seats.

A second filing at the same building on August 6, 2026 removed another 268 roles, with final separations dated September 30, 2026. Two 2026 filings, 533 seats gone from one tower.

The AI framing is coming from leadership commentary, not from the paperwork. CEO Jane Fraser told more than 200,000 employees in January 2026 that "automation, AI and further process simplification" would reshape work, and CFO Mark Mason said he expects headcount to keep falling as AI tools take hold. The WARN notices themselves do not name AI, because those notices only record headcount, addresses, and dates. State DOL dashboards index them. A recruiter reading your resume can compare your story to the filing in one tab switch.

Why "AI displaced me" is the wrong opening line

The "AI displaced me" line actively hurts an ex-Citi MD's resume because the filing on your own building contradicts it. If tech lost one seat and your desk lost two hundred, leaning on the automation narrative signals you did not read your own restructuring, and that is a fast disqualifier for any wealth or coverage role built on client trust.

The mechanism is simple. WARN filings are public. Hiring managers at HSBC, UBS, First Citizens, and Savvy Wealth read the same trade press you do. If you say "displaced by AI" and they see 248 of 265 came from Citibank N.A., you have told them two things at once:

• You do not know your own numbers.
• You are reaching for a sympathetic frame instead of a business one.

Neither reads well on someone who is supposed to explain complex balance sheets to ultra high net worth clients. The stronger opener is Citi's actual, stated growth math: the bank is targeting roughly 180,000 heads, down from about 227,000 at end of September, and it is simultaneously funding a Wealth and Services build. You were on the wrong side of a portfolio reshaping. That is a sentence a recruiter will accept.

The pool you are leaving vs the pool you are entering

The market for wealth advisors is roughly four times the size of the MD-in-banking market, and that changes what your resume has to argue. Seniority stops being a scarcity value once you cross the fence. It becomes a claim you have to justify against a much larger, more distributed talent pool.

Here is what Refolk's index of US professional profiles shows for the three buckets an ex-Citi MD is choosing between.

Three numbers pop out of that table:

1. The wealth advisor pool is about 4.1x the MD pool and about 7.2x the commercial banker pool.
2. JPMorganChase alone accounts for 7 of 25 sampled Commercial Bankers, roughly 28%. Trying to lateral MD-to-MD or RM-to-RM concentrates you into a handful of acquirers.
3. In the MD sample, only 4 of the top 10 employers are US commercial banks. If you assume JPM and BofA are the only landing pads, you are undercounting the market by about 60%.

Staying inside the banking-MD lane means fighting for a shrinking set of near-identical seats. Repositioning into Wealth means walking into a larger, more fragmented market where your book, your language, and your seniority all still price, but only if the resume argues in that market's terms.

The Wealth and Services opening Citi itself has published

Citi is hiring while it fires, and the buckets are specific. Andy Sieg, Citi's global head of wealth, disclosed a plan to add roughly 100 private bankers plus 400 client advisors and personal bankers, on top of the roughly 2,300 advisors already spread across Citigold, Wealth at Work, and the Private Bank.

The unit economics justify it. The wealth business delivered a net income rise of nearly 50% to $1.5 billion in 2025. Return on tangible common equity for Wealth moved from negative in 2023 to 11% in the first quarter of 2026, and Citi has set a target of 15% to 20% ROTCE in 2027 and 2028 and above 20% over the medium term.

Geographically, the anchor is Asia. Citi's Asia wealth business, covering Japan, Asia North, Australia, and Asia South, generated about $3 billion in 2025, roughly 35% of global wealth revenue. Sieg has publicly emphasized cross-referrals from the consumer bank to the Private Bank as a growth lever. Those two sentences are the target job description. Your resume should read like the person hired to execute them.

Rewriting the MD resume for Wealth and Services

The rewrite is a language swap, not a fabrication. You keep the balance sheet, the coverage relationships, and the deal history. You change the vocabulary from "credit facility" and "syndication" to "client assets under advisory," "cross-referred from consumer to Private Bank," and "share of wallet."

Concretely, an ex-Citi MD's bullets should shift like this:

• "Led $850M syndicated credit facility for middle-market industrials client" becomes "Anchored $850M capital solution for founder-CEO whose family office subsequently onboarded to Private Bank."
• "Managed coverage relationship across cash management, FX, and lending" becomes "Owned primary relationship for HNW principal with $X in investable assets; drove referrals into Wealth at Work."
• "Grew portfolio 14% YoY" becomes "Grew fee-based revenue 14% YoY through cross-sell into wealth and services products."

The point is not to invent a wealth career you did not have. The point is to surface the wealth-adjacent facts that were already in your book. Most MDs writing their own resume post-layoff will describe the credit product; the recruiter for Sieg's build wants to see the client and the referral. That is the exact work Refolk takes off you: paste the wealth advisor posting, and Refolk rewrites your own history against it, keeping the client-facing wins and translating the credit vocabulary into the wealth vocabulary the ATS is scanning for, then scores how well your history actually matches before you send.

Named landing pads beyond the two banks everyone lists

If you assume the shortlist is JPMorgan and Bank of America, you are missing where the actual demand is. Four to check first:

• First Citizens Bank, the top employer of Banking MDs in Refolk's sample and a quiet acquirer of senior commercial coverage.
• Savvy Wealth, the top employer of Wealth Advisors in the sample, an RIA aggregator actively pulling from wirehouses.
• HSBC, which acquired Citi's retail wealth business in China and continues to build lifestyle-focused wealth centers, hiring almost the exact profile Citi is releasing.
• UBS, post Credit Suisse integration across Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan, actively competing for ex-Citi private bankers.

The last two are the Asia angle. If you had any coverage of NRI, Greater China, or Southeast Asian family principals from your Citi seat, that goes near the top of the resume, not buried under a credit deal.

The severance runway is longer than you think

You have runway to build the right resume rather than take the first lateral, because the March cuts landed after bonuses were paid. Reuters reported that the layoffs would likely be announced after bonuses, and Bloomberg reported Citigroup reserved $600 million for severance costs, roughly double the bank's typical figure.

Two implications:

1. Most affected MDs have a paid 2025 bonus plus severance stacking on top. That is a real window.
2. Because the window is real, the resume you send should be built for the right seat, not the fast seat. A three-week rewrite that lands you at HSBC Private Bank in Singapore beats a same-week lateral into a lookalike commercial-bank seat that will get cut in the next reshaping.

Practically, that means picking three to five specific target firms, reading their most recent public strategy notes, and tailoring the resume against each posting. That is the loop that turns a paid runway into a better landing, instead of the same seat one block over.

FAQ

Should I mention the Citi layoff on my resume at all?

Yes, but as one line in the current-role dates, not as narrative. Say the desk was eliminated as part of a strategic reshaping toward Wealth and Services and move on. Do not attribute the cut to AI on the page. The WARN filings do not support it, and the person reading your resume can check.

Is internal transfer to Citi Wealth realistic if I was just cut?

Realistic for some, especially if you had HNW clients in your coverage book and existing referral history into Citigold or the Private Bank. Sieg's disclosed plan to add roughly 100 private bankers and 400 client advisors is public. Reach out through your former manager and reference specific referred clients, not a generic interest in wealth.

What about non-US markets given Citi's Asia wealth focus?

Asia is where the wealth economics are strongest, roughly 35% of global wealth revenue in 2025. If you have any coverage of Asia-based principals, family offices, or NRI clients, that experience belongs at the top of the resume. UBS in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan and HSBC across the same corridor are the most active hiring desks for ex-Citi private bankers.

How different does a wealth resume need to be from a commercial banking one?

Different enough that a copy-paste will not work. The keywords, the metrics, and the ordering all change. Commercial banking resumes lead with deal size, credit structure, and portfolio yield. Wealth resumes lead with client assets, share of wallet, and referral flows.