Citi Names IBM Exec Ryan Rugg, FinTech Veteran David Cunningham to TTS Digital Team

Citi has named Wall Street and IBM veteran Ryan Rugg as its global head of digital assets for treasury and trade solutions (TTS).

“Ryan is well positioned to advance TTS to the next phase in our digital assets journey,” Citi said in a news release emailed to PYMNTS Tuesday (Aug. 16).

The company points to her most recent role as partner and head of IBM Americas Blockchain team for Consulting “where she helped enhance client solutions and capabilities for building digital ecosystems.”

She also served as head of the business industry unit at the enterprise software firm R3 and has “extensive financial services experience spending” after 14 years on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.

See also: Citi Names Goldman Sachs Veteran Artie Ambrose Head of TTS Operations

Meanwhile, Citi has appointed David Cunningham as director of strategic partner development for digital assets for TTS.

“In this role, he will be focused on developing our partnership strategy towards the execution of our digital assets objectives – a key component to our future success,” the release said.

Citi calls Cunningham a “serial founder” and CEO in the FinTech and RegTech space, most recently serving as chief commercial officer at LexTego, a RegTech company that offers transaction monitoring to prevent financial crime.

Rugg and Cunningham’s hiring comes weeks after Citi appointed Goldman Sachs veteran Artie Ambrose as head of its TTS operations division.

In this role, Ambrose is charged with developing a strategy that drives scalability while curbing processing risk, as well as enhancing products and services through automation and boosting customers’ experience with Citi.

Read more: Citigroup to Add 4,000 Tech Workers to Move Clients Online

The banking giant said in June it planned to hire more than 4,000 people to its tech team to move institutional clients online in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

“We’re trying to digitalize as much of our client experience as possible, front and back, and modernize our technology,” Jonathan Lofthouse, who heads Citi’s markets and enterprise risk technology operation, said at the time. “Those firms that can digitalize fastest are going to create competitive advantage.”