Global Head of Citi Private Bank
It’s been a strange couple of years for private bankers: Lockdowns made it harder to connect with clients in person, yet the equities markets continued to rise despite the pandemic, causing assets under management to swell across the board.
At Citigroup, responsibility for shepherding ultra-high-net-worth clients through COVID-roiled markets fell to Ida Liu, who ran the North American Private Bank until becoming global head of the entire division earlier this year.
Liu spurred her team to call on more clients virtually during the lockdowns, as well as encouraging private bankers to point clients toward Citi’s investments business. As a result, the North American unit in 2020 continued the double-digit growth Liu had led for the past five years, a trend that lasted into 2021. After a year when the group acquired more clients than expected, it now serves one-third of North American billionaires; the average client has a net worth that’s four times higher than just a few years ago.
The daughter of a venture capitalist, Liu grew up in San Francisco and went to Wellesley College, then became an investment banker. She left Wall Street to work as an executive at the fashion house Vivienne Tam, then returned several years later, pitching Citi on the concept of a new private-bank group focused on fashion, media and entertainment clients that she would run. Her next big idea was a U.S.-based group focused on wealthy Asians, which she launched in 2011.
Liu became head of Citi’s North American private bank in 2019 and, in 2020, beat her projections by 12% despite the pandemic. As head of the entire private bank, she now oversees 6,000 staffers working at 50 offices in 18 countries (or, over the past year and a half, working from home).
Liu sits on a number of Citi executive committees, including the North America Crisis Management Oversight Team, which is responsible for bringing the workforce back to the office after the COVID lockdowns; the North American Business Council, which she co-chairs; and the Women Steering Committee. She also heads the bank’s recruiting efforts at Wellesley, her alma mater.
Outside of work, she has several volunteer commitments, including sitting on the board of UCLA Medicine, being a member of the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American leaders’ group advocating ties between the two countries, and serving as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization.
Liu has been dusting off her Spanish during the pandemic — she speaks four languages aside from English, including her native Mandarin Chinese — and now holds Spanish-language meetings with her Latin American team. She did this while balancing the demands of two small
Children at home during the COVID lockdowns. She also serves as a class parent.
