Citizens Readies for Life After CEO ‘Goes Into the Sunset’

Citizens Financial Group Inc.’s Bruce Van Saun has spent the past decade turning the struggling former US business of Royal Bank of Scotland Plc into a bank with $228 billion in assets, more than tripling its stock price along the way. His next goal: To ensure that the company will be in good hands after he departs. It’s become an even bigger task as Citizens has built up operations spanning private wealth, commercial and investment banking. “I just turned 69,” Van Saun said in an interview. “You’ve gotta plan for — do you have what you need to have when Bruce goes into the sunset?” Van Saun hasn’t indicated any timeline for his retirement, and there are no imminent plans to replace him. But as he maps out a potential plan for succession, he’s homed in on an executive who’s the most likely contender, Brendan Coughlin. Coughlin, 46, was promoted to president last year after more than two decades at the company. A longtime consumer-banking expert, he helped build Citizens’ digital strategy to gain customers beyond the reach of the firm’s physical branch network. He was also what Van Saun called “the tip of the spear” behind the expansion into private banking in recent years, now one of the firm’s major growth engines. “I’d say the obvious candidate to do this is Brendan,” Van Saun said. “He’s been up to the task, and he’s continuing to demonstrate very good leadership qualities. We’ll just continue to watch that closely.” In 2024, “leadership succession” awards were given to Coughlin and two other executives who have since left. Meanwhile, Van Saun has given him even more responsibilities. Coughlin now oversees two of the three key business lines, the consumer bank and the upstart private bank, in addition to marketing and data analytics functions. On Wednesday, Citizens said Coughlin would officially gain oversight for the commercial bank, giving him responsibility for all the bank’s major businesses. Ted Swimmer, who leads the commercial bank, will report to Coughlin. Coughlin has also been tasked with a bigger venture across the firm. He’s leading a new initiative to help the 198-year-old bank invest $250 million to adapt to technology changes, such as the boom in artificial intelligence. It’s already starting to take shape — by the end of the year, the bank expects that bots will handle 25% of the inbounds to its call center. Coughlin’s promotion last year is one of the many recent changes as Van Saun bolsters his leadership team. Swimmer, 57, now leads the commercial and investment bank. His predecessor Don McCree, who built up this business alongside Van Saun a decade ago, retired in March. Also, Matt Boss was tapped as head of consumer banking and Michelle Moosally was named general counsel and chief legal officer. Outside of the firm, Citizens has been introducing Coughlin to a broader audience. He has been speaking at conferences regularly and meeting with investors and analysts. “I think that the investor-relations team has begun the process of allowing him to have a more prominent role in interaction with investors,” said Hunter Doble, a portfolio manager at Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management, which owns Citizens shares. Private Bank A new focus for Citizens in recent years has been its private bank for high-net-worth clients. Created in the aftermath of First Republic Bank’s collapse in 2023, the business has amassed more than $16.6 billion in deposits and $7.7 billion in loans in less than three years. Back then, the decision to pursue this business had to be made quick, Van Saun recalled. Although Citizens lost the bid for First Republic to JPMorgan Chase & Co., Van Saun’s lender spotted another opportunity to hire bankers who didn’t want to make the jump to JPMorgan. Coughlin was up to the challenge, traveling to meet with bankers in different cities and helping the management team gauge if it would be a viable business, Van Saun said. “It was a pretty big bet — 150 expensive people and a turbulent time in ’23 — no guarantee it was going to get off the ground and that the customers would follow,” Van Saun said. Now, Citizens has nine private-bank offices, including one in New York City, and is on track to open as many as 30 in the next several years. It wasn’t the first time Coughlin helped bring new ideas to fruition. Earlier in his career, Coughlin struck a partnership with Apple Inc. in 2015 to provide point-of-sale financing for iPhone upgrades in stores and through carriers. At the time, the idea — popularized by fintechs — was novel to banks and Coughlin was aiming big in his pursuit of the partnership, said Mark Casady, who was on the board of Citizens from 2014 to 2020. “Brendan wasn’t the kind of leader to under-promise and over-deliver,” Casady recalled. Citizens later extended the business to Microsoft Corp. for Xbox purchases, and it still retains the Apple partnership. There’s still room to run. While Van Saun has played down Citizens’ appetite for buying another bank right now, the firm’s peers are rewriting industry rankings by pursuing acquisitions to boost scale and build footholds in other markets. Fifth Third Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares Inc. just closed deals in the first quarter, leapfrogging Citizens in size. “We are not compelled to do a transaction or make big investments to go beyond the natural rate of organic investment,” Van Saun said. “I like being in that position that you can just be opportunistic. Something could fall in our lap, just like First Republic.”