Michael Ruttledge, Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology Services, Citizens Financial Group.
Citizens Bank has established a Global Capability Center (GCC) in India as part of its technology expansion plans.
Michael Rutledge, Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology Services at Citizens Financial Group, said the decision was driven by the need for skilled technical talent.
“This move is driven by an urgent need for speed and talent that local markets alone cannot satisfy. We want a truly global workforce that enables 24/7 development,” said Rutledge, who was in town recently to tour the center.
“Financial institutions are under pressure to move faster – not just to compete with banks, but also with fintechs. So there is a recognition that we need to be more agile, that GCC gives us access to talent and the opportunity to develop skills that we may not find locally. So that is our pursuit,” he explained.
“Hyderabad also offers access to over 40 colleges, which is a great pipeline for hiring new talent,” he said.
Earlier this year, Cognizant helped Citizens Bank set up its largest GCC in Hyderabad at its GAR facility, focused on AI, cloud, cybersecurity and automation through its Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model.
“We have already hired more than 300 colleagues for the center in the technology space, targeting disciplines such as mobile engineers, software engineers, data engineers and data scientists. Our overall plan is to hire approximately 1,000 colleagues through Cognizant between now and April next year,” he said.
“The teams here will focus on delivering new capabilities. For example, the teams here are developing all the APIs for our middleware as part of our mainframe. This is where we’re modernizing a number of technology platforms. We’ve done mobile development here, and it’s the first time we’ve done mobile development outside of the US,” he said.
The GCC in Hyderabad is playing a key role in the development of the new mobile platform that the company is working on. “We have also built a new cloud-based account opening platform, partly developed here, and our AWS-based data ecosystem is supported from this center. Going forward, Hyderabad teams will support payment processing, commercial platforms, Salesforce platform, risk and financial platforms. There will be significant development here,” he said.
Through the Cognizant Outreach Program, the bank said it would volunteer for the initiative to empower girls from rural and underprivileged communities to pursue education and careers in technology.
Published on October 28, 2025
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