Axis Bank acquires Citibank’s Retail Business in India

Citibank, which is a renowned global bank, previously announced in April 2021 that it is going to exit the retail business in order to focus on more profit-making businesses. Once this was announced, Citibank started losing its credit card customers rapidly. After many rumours, Axis Bank has formally announced the acquisition of Citibank’s Retail business. Not only credit cards, but the acquisition also includes wealth management, retail accounts of customers, etc. The total value of the deal is around $1.6 billion. Read on to know more about the Citi consumer business acquisition by Axis Bank:

Axis Bank Acquires Citi Consumer Business

Axis Bank, which has an outstanding credit card base of around 8.6 million, is now going to acquire the consumer business of Citibank, which has an outstanding credit card base much lower than that of Axis Bank. The consumer business of Citibank includes retail banking, Citi credit cards, consumer loans, wealth management, etc. Citibank has around 35 branches, around 3, 600 employees, over 2.5 million account holders, around 1.2 million loan accounts, and around 2.6 million credit cardholders.

Other than this, the non-banking financial company of Citibank, Citi Corp (India) Finance Limited, will also be included in the transaction and around 3,600 employees who are working for Citibank’s consumer business will be transferred to Axis Bank. The integration is expected to take around 12 to 18 months and till then, Citibank will take care of its customers so that they don’t face any sort of issues.

Affect Of Acquisition On Credit Card Customers

As discussed above, Citibank will be taking care of all its credit cardholders and other customers for the next 12 to 18 months (until the integration completes fully), the customers won’t be affected much in any manner. Post that, we expect that Axis Bank will migrate all the Citibank credit cardholders to similar credit cards present in Axis Bank’s portfolio. Citibank has 6 credit cards in its portfolio and Axis Bank has a lot more cards compared to this, so finding a similar card in Axis Bank’s portfolio shouldn’t be a big deal for the card issuer.

For example, the Citi PremierMiles Credit Cardholders can be transferred to the Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card, Citi Cash Back Credit Card to Axis Bank Ace Credit Card, and so on. However, nothing about this has been announced by the card issuer yet, and we will update the article once the bank announces something on this.

Bottom Line

Citibank, which was the first financial institution to introduce Indians to credit cards, is now going to exit its consumer business in the country. The announcement might be a bit disappointing for the customers who were loyal to the bank, but they don’t need to worry as the business has been acquired by another major and trusted card issuer, Axis Bank. As a result, Axis Bank has come up as a lead buyer in the market. However, no one here needs to worry as all the Citibank account holders, credit card holders, and even the employees have been kept in mind by the card issuers. We expect that the acquisition will prove to be a great success. In case of any additional doubts, feel free to ask us in the comment section below!