Dive Brief:

• Citi has more than doubled — to nine, from four a year ago — the number of senior Black executives in its ranks, according to data the bank released this month.
• The bank also doubled its proportion of Black employees at the executive level — not just the senior executive one — such that Black people make up 7.7% of Citi’s executive workforce, up from 3.8% a year ago, according to Bloomberg.
• Black women with top leadership roles increased to four from one, the wire service reported.

Dive Insight:

Black employees in the category that includes midlevel managers totaled 777 at Citi this year, up from 633 a year earlier, the bank disclosed in its employer information report.

The bank’s head of talent and diversity, however, said more needs to be done.

“There’s still a lot of work to do,” Erika Irish Brown told Bloomberg on Monday. “Have we made significant progress, and progress we’re proud of? Yes, absolutely. But to say, ‘We’ve done it, we’ve figured it out,’ or ‘Game over,’ that’s not the case at all.”

Citi, which in March 2021 became the first major U.S. bank to tap a female CEO, has not shied away from addressing the racial and gender pay gaps that exist in the financial services industry.

The bank said this year it slightly surpassed its target for Black managers to occupy at least 8% of roles from assistant vice president to managing director, according to Bloomberg.

It announced in December that it promoted a class of managing directors last year comprising 34.6% women, an increase of more than 5 percentage points over 2020’s group.

Citi in 2018 became the first major U.S.-based bank to report raw gender pay gap data.

The bank claims minority employees in its U.S. arm made 96 cents for every dollar for White colleagues last year, up from 93 cents three years earlier.

Citi’s efforts to achieve racial and gender equality fall in line with other commitments made by its large Wall Street peers. Progress, however, has been slow among the nation’s top financial institutions.

Goldman Sachs, for example, has seen a drop in the number of Black female leaders employed by the firm.

Goldman Sachs had 19 female Black executives as of November, down from 25 the previous year, according to data released by the investment bank.

The report shows the bank has not yet reached the diversity goals it set in 2020 for vice presidents by 2025, according to Bloomberg.

Black workers in the Americas and the U.K. account for 4% of vice presidents — under the 7% target set by the bank. Women make up 32% of the bank’s vice presidents, short of the 40% goal, Bloomberg reported.

Like Citi, Goldman has likened its progress towards diversity as being in the early stages. 

“As we seek to advance racial equity, both at our firm and in our communities, we want to emphasize that this is a key moment to effect lasting improvement,” Megan Hogan, head of diversity at Goldman, said last year. “We are at a pivotal inflection point, and this conversation is just the beginning.”