HSBC hires 16-year Citi alum for role in low-cost tech hub

Poland is becoming an increasingly attractive place for banks and hedge funds alike to build out teams, but HSBC and Citi have some of the biggest teams with more than 6,000 and 7,000 employees in Poland, respectively. This week, a veteran of the latter has left for the former.

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Magdalena Zaroń has joined HSBC as its head of EU technology programmes and CIO for credit, lending and sustainability. Most recently, she was technology demand lead for Citi's global wealth division in Warsaw. While the quality of tech in Citi Wealth has faced a lot of scrutiny in recent years, it has notably acted fast to automate multiple processes where human error nearly cost the bank trillions.

For more than half of her Citi tenure, Zaroń worked in finance rather than technology. She joined in the bank's international finance and tax accounting team, then rose to become Citi's CFO and head of finance for its Poland solution centre before transitioning to tech. She's not an outlier; Citi's most recent MD promotions show that it has an affinity for putting people with non-technical backgrounds in tech leadership roles, especially as it looks to curb costs. At HSBC, Zaroń says her team will develop "cutting-edge solutions with a tight control around Cost, Schedule and Quality aspects."

Before joining Citi Wealth, Zaroń was Warsaw site lead for functions technology. Citi's CIO of functions technology, Milly Webb, also left for HSBC in London earlier this year.

Other banks are allegedly shifting over roles from London to Poland, but HSBC already did so for graduates last summer. It offered to relocate international graduates to the region after the UK tightened visa rules. Graduates were also offered the chance to move to India or China. For now, however, Citi's technologists in London are safe; the bank is cutting staff but is focusing its efforts on bankers as it shutters its M&A and ECM teams in Europe and the US.

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