Citi Names Barclays Vet James Morris as UK Commercial Banking Head

Citi has a new head of commercial banking (CCB) for the United Kingdom.

James Morris, a 25-year veteran of British banking giant Barclays, is expected to take on that role Sept. 30, Citi announced Monday (July 15) in a news release emailed to PYMNTS.

“James is an experienced banking leader with a proven track record of leading high-performance teams across multiple sectors and geographies,” Tasnim Ghiawadwala, head of Citi Commercial Bank, said in a news release. “I am confident that James will continue the excellent progress of our UK CCB franchise and drive strong momentum in the market.”

Morris will be responsible for all of Citi’s commercial banking business and operations in the U.K., including driving the bank’s business strategy and financial performance.

At Barclays, Morris held a number of senior positions, including U.K. head of business and professional services for large corporate banking, one he took on in 2021.

“CCB is an integral part of Citi’s global strategy and key engine for growth,” the news release said. “It focuses on delivering Citi’s product suite, including but not limited to cash and liquidity management, foreign exchange, trade finance, capital markets and lending solutions, to mid-sized corporates that are either global or looking to build an international footprint.”

In other British banking news, the country’s Financial Ombudsman Service said last week that U.K. consumers have more complaints about the banking sector than they did a year ago.

Complaints about the industry are at their highest level in at least a decade, with all the most complained about products seeing year-over-year increases in cases, the FOS said.

In all, the number of complaints jumped from 61,995 in the financial year 2022-23 to 80,137 in the financial year 2023-24.

“It’s always concerning when you see cases rise so significantly, particularly when so many people are struggling in the current economic climate,” Abby Thomas, CEO and chief ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman Service, said in a news release.

Frauds and scams accounted for more complaints than ever before, the regulator said, with about half of these cases involving authorized push payment (APP) scams in which consumers were duped into sending money only to fraudsters.

APP fraud is on the rise throughout countries where real-time and instant payment rails are increasingly common, including the U.K., the European Union and the United States, PYMNTS reported in March.

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