Alex Sion Exits Citi; Joins Sapient
Alex Sion left Citi's global wealth management practice last week and today is joining marketing and technology services company Sapient as VP of digital strategy in New York. In his new role, Sion will focus on retail financial services and a broader mandate to help like-minded companies use different approaches to marketing and advertising to interact with customers and products through new types of platforms.
Sion believes the financial industry is at transformational point where it can utilize the tools of social networking, digital advertising and interactive marketing to bring personal financial services to the customer. Sion spent the last four years working on Citi's myFi initiative.
At Citi, Sion was SVP in charge of distribution and partnerships over at Citi's myFi, an initiative to bring financial wellness to the mass affluent segment. Prior to Citi, Sion was with CapGemini's wealth management practice but then joined CIti thinking of how technology can enable mass affluent delivery.
"It was a mission to help everyday people to get control of their every day lives so they could sleep better at night," says Sion. While Citi was already strong in the ultra-high net worth market through Smith Barney, it was seeking to reach the folks that were less attractive to financial services firm. To make this economically feasible, it came up with the subscription-based financial wellness model of charging $100 per month. In the same way that consumers might pay $100 a month to visit the gym to get physically fit, myFi offered the financial coaching from a dedicated team of experts, explained Sion.
Situated within Smith Barney, myFi was conceived prior to the financial crisis. There would be no requirements for product from Citi or assets at Citi. It was "completely transparent — you knew exactly what you were paying for," said Sion. myFi had put up a beta Web site and was using social networking community, peer comparisons, account aggregation and a lot of new media and Web 2.0 elements to support the financial wellness offering, according to Sion.
Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio
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