Citigroup phasing out platform for ’emerging affluent’
Citigroup is shutting down its myFi brand, a financial advice platform for the “emerging affluent” market, which targets people with less than $500,000 to invest.
Citigroup is shutting down its myFi brand, a financial advice platform for the “emerging affluent” market, which targets people with less than $500,000 to invest.
MyFi offered customers telephone and Internet-based financial advice as part of its Financial Wellness program for $50 a month.
The platform will be re-branded as part of Citigroup Inc.’s Personal Wealth Management division over the next several months, Deborah McWhinney, managing director and head of the division, announced in a memo last month that was first reported by Bloomberg this morning.
The myFi brand will be retired and the platform retooled to offer financial advice to the bank’s clients through the Internet and call centers, she said in an interview with Bloomberg.
The myFi service model for clients with lower assets “will serve as the core of [Citi’s] new and vastly expanded national branch capability,” Ms. McWhinney said in the memo.
MyFi lost the primary source of its referrals when Citigroup sold a controlling interest in its Smith Barney brokerage unit to Morgan Stanley of New York in May.
New York-based Citigroup has declined to reveal myFi’s assets, but the platform was responsible for a portion of the $31.8 billion of assets under management within Citigroup’s U.S. retail bank as of June 30, Bloomberg reported.
“Online-advice models have never been able to make money,” said Tim Welsh, president of Larkspur, Calif.-based Nexus Strategy LLC, a wealth management industry consultant.
“Ultimately, people don’t pay for online advice; they can get it for free.”
In a memo to staff members yesterday, Ms. McWhinney named Jeff Nichol head of a newly created “national access branch” that will develop an “online national service center capability.”
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