Citi's global head of compliance has reinvented himself...in FinTech

John P. Davidson, the former global head of compliance at Citigroup, announced his retirement from the bank in October last year and was given a pat on the back by CEO Mike Corbat for helping steer the bank through the financial crisis.

Four months on and he's just re-emerged in a new venture - he's going it alone and looking to advise FinTech and RegTech companies. As of earlier this month, Davidson has launched his own consultancy firm Pirnie Advisory LLC, which will put his varied finance experience to use helping tech companies.

For the past three years, Davidson was chief compliance officer at Citi, but he held various positions there during his eight years at the bank. He was head of enterprise risk management for two years until he moved into compliance in 2013, and was chief administrative officer within risk management prior to this. Before joining Citi, Davidson was chief business development officer at CME Group. He also worked for more than 12 years in senior operations roles at Morgan Stanley.

Advising FinTech start ups is the latest thing. As we've mentioned previously, senior technologists such as Rhomaios Ram the former founding partner of Deutsche Bank’s digital bank or former UBS CIO Oliver Bussmann have both reinvented themselves as FinTech consultants.

It's less common for financial services professionals in front or middle office roles to move into the tech sector, however.

Meanwhile, there's been a lot of churn in the upper ranks of Citi's compliance team in recent months. As well as Davidson's departure, Paul Tufaro, who was a managing director and global head of corporate compliance, left in December.

Tufaro, who build and led a team of 100 compliance professionals in Citi's corporate division, has joined bank CIT as chief compliance officer.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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