Citizens' parent to boost hiring and technology

In a bid to strengthen its position in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states, the parent of Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania is spending $500 million on technology, hiring 80 lenders for small- and mid-sized companies, and adding 100 mortgage bankers.

The Philadelphia region, where Citizens was third last year to Wachovia Bank and TD Bank in deposits, will see its share of the new people and technology, Citizens Financial Group chairman and chief executive Ellen Alemany said in an interview Monday. "It is a top-priority market for us," she said.

Citizens Financial, based in Rhode Island, has branches in 12 states.

The bank, owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, also has a new advertising campaign starting Wednesday that is designed to remind people that banking at its core is a simple business involving saving and lending. "There's no gimmick. There's nothing exotic. We're in a very straightforward business," she said.

Alemany said the $500 million in technology investment would include new systems for tellers and for managing commercial loans and home mortgages, as well as enhancements to cash-management and online-banking systems.

The planned hiring of 100 mortgage lenders this year comes on top of 140 mortgage lenders hired since last year. The plan is to add 475 mortgage bankers over three years, Alemany said.

The bank is also adding business lenders, though for competitive reasons it would not say how many it already had, as demand is building.

"Customers are having the dialogue with us about investing. We definitely see more momentum in the commercial-banking space," Alemany said, particularly in health care, life sciences, medical devices, manufacturing, and certain kinds of retail.

A continuing emphasis in the Philadelphia region is wealth management, Alemany said. Citizens already announced in March the addition of 27 bankers here to deal with customers who have $200,000 to $1.5 million in investments and deposits.