Citigroup’s Pam Habner is leading her bank into the fiercely competitive and lucrative high-end credit card market against giant competitors like American Express, Capital One and JPMorganChase. 

“I’ve been in financial services for more than 30 years and the competition has always been fierce but today it is at a new level,” said Habner, head of branded cards and lending for Citigroup, noting the rush of new and relaunched premium cards that are entering the market. Habner played a major role in the launch of Strata Elite, Citi’s first card for high-end consumers in four years. This comes as Chase recently refreshed its Sapphire card with new travel, fitness and experience perks, and higher fees, and Amex plans a refresh of its Platinum card for 2025. Strata Elite has an annual fee of $595, less than Sapphire’s $795 and Platinum’s $695.

Kelly Coffey almost ended up working for the Central Intelligence Agency after graduating from Georgetown University with a master of science degree in foreign service. But instead Coffey opted for a riskier career — in banking. 

After 37 years in the banking industry, Diane Morais, the former president of consumer and commercial banking at Ally, retired in July, 2024.

“I was raised in a family where you needed to earn what you had,” said Pourchet, head of corporate and institutional banking, Latin America, at BNP Paribas, where she leads 980 employees and helps manage nearly $2.6 trillion of client assets. “You need to persevere and you need to be very thankful.”

Pourchet later emigrated to New York, with a husband and three children in tow, to become head of commodity structured debt in Latin America at BNP Paribas.

Melissa Stevens is moving colleagues and customers to digital banking, but she is also growing Fifth Third Bank in a more traditional way: Increasing the number of physical branches.

Stevens’ expansive role at the Cincinnati-based lender includes head of enterprise workplace services, which puts her in charge of Fifth Third’s properties. Between 2019 and 2023, Fifth Third opened 107 new branches in the Southeastern states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to the bank.

Hope Holding Bryant commands nearly half of First Citizens Bank’s balance sheet. 

Last year, the North Carolina-based financial institution increased general bank loans by $3.9 billion, a 6.3% year-over-year growth. As of Q4 2024, general bank loans accounted for $66.8 billion – 48% of total loans. On the other side of the balance sheet, last year general bank deposits grew $9.4 billion to $73.1 billion, which accounts for 47% of total bank deposits. 

Holding Bryant, the vice chairwoman, attributes this success to serendipitous acquisitions over the past few years. In April 2019, First Citizens acquired Biscayne Bank. In January 2022, First Citizens merged with CIT Group. And in March 2023, the bank acquired Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.

With digital commerce growing rapidly, it’s important to pick up the pace of development, Bridgit Chayt says.

“Last year has shown a lot of progress in the way we work,” said Chayt, executive vice president and head of commercial payments and treasury management. “We have been able to onboard at the ‘speed of fintech’ rather than the ‘speed of banking,’ which is gratifying.” 

Chayt was pivotal to Fifth Third’s acquisition of Rize Money in late 2023 and the subsequent launch of Newline, the bank’s embedded payments business. Embedded payments refers to payment products that are integrated into software or a platform. Consumers or businesses use embedded payments to complete a transaction without leaving an app or website. Embedded payments are often grouped with embedded finance, which refers to the delivery of banking services via relationships with third parties, another strategy that is a big part of Fifth Third’s business.