◆ AI AT WORK · Enterprise
Citi says Devin helps it bring vendor work in-house
The News
On Citi's October 13, 2026 third-quarter earnings call, CEO Jane Fraser said 14,000 of the bank's engineers use Devin, its main agentic coding tool, and that in-sourcing work had cut tech vendor spend 30% year over year. She said financial benefits from AI and automation in 2026 significantly outweigh the investments made year-to-date.
Chandni Melwani
Founder & Editor
Oct 22, 2026 · 1 MIN READ
Know More
- — Product launches: Fraser says AI brings lower cost and typically a 30% to 40% increase in launch speed.
- — Most manual processes: around 100 have been or are being re-engineered end-to-end with AI and automation, Fraser says.
- — Client service: Fraser says AI tools for Services client-service agents operate in 82 countries; response times improved 21%.
- — Revenue: Fraser says it is 'earlier days still on revenue generation' from AI.
Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo Securities saw Citi move up in an AI survey ranking, and on the bank’s October 13 earnings call he asked Fraser what it had done with AI. She started with the grade: “I was somewhat surprised we were only near the top 10.”
She called reworking Citi’s most manual processes “perhaps the biggest example.” Her coding example reached Citi’s suppliers. Fraser said Devin, Cognition’s AI agent that writes code, makes it “much more efficient to do work in-house,” and Citi has been in-sourcing, taking back work it had paid tech vendors to do. Anthropic’s study of its own engineers counted code added; Fraser counted the vendor bill.
She put no dollar figure on the AI and automation benefits or the investment she said they outweigh. Those gains will accelerate in coming years, she said, since the benefits “recur year after year once the investment is made.”
The Read
Fraser presents Devin's payoff as substitution, with engineers taking back outsourced work and vendor spend falling. Citi's CFO says it will fund about $5bn of extra investment over three years 'the hard way', via 'relentless structural efficiency focus'. More vendor work will probably move in-house, since Fraser says the cut has 'a long way still to run'.
Room for Disagreement
Fraser gave no dollar base for the vendor bill, and Citi says costs from its transformation, the programme that modernized its core technology platform, are also coming down. If that wind-down explains much of the cut, vendor spend could level off as those costs bottom out.
Related
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Citi say how many jobs AI affects?
No. Neither Fraser nor CFO Gonzalo Luchetti gave a headcount or jobs figure on the call. Luchetti said Citi had recognized over $1 billion of severance year-to-date, 'largely across functions, technology and operations,' as it drives structural efficiencies and brings down transformation expenses and stranded costs. He said about $200 million of severance in the third quarter is directly linked to the structural-efficiency work on the '100+ end-to-end processes', which he called part of 'the unlocking through automation and AI the efficiencies' Citi is looking to deploy.
Why did an analyst ask whether Citi is an AI 'victim'?
Mayo described 'the AI scare trade that deposits will flow out of Citigroup due to more advanced cash sorting.' Fraser said she is not worried about deposit flight risk in Services, saying the network Citi has built 'is so hard to replicate across its multiple dimensions.'
What did Fraser say about AI and cyber risk?
She said AI 'puts powerful tools in the hands of bad actors,' and that Citi is 'deploying frontier models securely through a structured harness across our entire perimeter,' identifying and addressing vulnerabilities at speed and scale, and working closely with peers and industry leaders to ensure defense is coordinated across industries. Earlier in the call she named strengthening defenses as the fourth of four lenses through which Citi approaches AI.
Sources
- Citigroup, 'Citi Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call' transcript, October 13, 2026. Source for every figure and quotation in this post, including Mike Mayo's question and Jane Fraser's answer (Devin, in-sourcing and tech vendor spend, product launches, processes, benefits and investments, client service, revenue, cyber, deposit flight), Gonzalo Luchetti on the $5bn investment plan and severance, and Fraser on transformation costs.
- Hero photo: 388 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, Manhattan, by Kidfly182, Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 4.0
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, which applies to the hero photo
- Cognition, Devin's maker: "Devin plans, writes, tests, and ships production code on its own, working inside your codebase and the tools your team already uses."
Chandni Melwani
Chandni Melwani is the founder and editor of New in AI, covering AI agents, M&A, and enterprise adoption. She holds a Master's in Management of Artificial Intelligence from Queen's University and brings a practitioner's perspective from her work in Data and AI leadership.
Follow ↗AI at Work Briefing
Get the five-beat briefing in your inbox.
The big story, frontier labs, AI at work, e-commerce and the capital crossing borders, each with the part that tells you why it matters, not just that it happened.
Free · No spam · Unsubscribe in one click
More from AI at Work
Workflows
Lloyds uses AI agents on debit-card fraud calls
Lloyds says the agentic AI platform its specialists use to investigate suspected debit-card fraud reached over 90% overall decision accuracy in September, following continued testing and refinement.
Chandni Melwani · UK · Oct 29, 2026
Adoption
BofA says AI makes its tech development 10% more efficient
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told analysts on October 14, 2026 that the bank has about 130 AI projects implemented, each with a payback, and that its technology development work is 10% more efficient.
Chandni Melwani · US · Oct 23, 2026
Jobs
Anthropic reports juniors fell to 9% of its technical hires
Anthropic's October 16, 2026 report on its own workforce says junior employees' share of its technical departments slipped from 21% to 14% since early 2025. It says the proportion of junior technical hires fell from 27% to 9% as hours worked by AI agents rapidly expanded relative to employees'.
Chandni Melwani · US · Oct 21, 2026