Krish Swamy, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Citizens Financial, speaks with Jonathan Steinert, Partner, Financial Services Technology at Guidehouse, about the role of CDAOs in unlocking data power in banking, building a data culture, making data accessible through the data marketplace, and a structured approach to simplify data access in the data marketplace.

Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the oldest and largest financial institutions in the U.S., headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. The bank offers a broad range of retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, and corporations.

The role of CDAOs and the future of banking

Swamy shares his perspective on the evolving role of Chief Data and Analytics Officers (CDAOs) and the immense potential that data holds within the banking industry. When asked what keeps him energized in the role, Swamy states that the role is rooted in impact.

The ability to leverage vast stores of data not just for operational execution but to truly transform customer experience and organizational decision-making is the motivator. Drawing on the example of banking, he notes that financial institutions have long been adept at using data for seamless transaction processing.

“Banks have always been a treasure trove of data, and banks have done really well to use that data for executing transactions,” says Swamy. Adding on, he says that the transactions work almost a hundred percent of the time, and when they do not, it is usually a technology glitch or a fraud-related reason.

While acknowledging this operational strength, Swamy emphasizes a new frontier: “The opportunity in front of banking and definitely also in front of Citizens Bank is how do we use the same data for driving customer experience? How do we do that to put out better products, which are more in tune with customer needs? How do we improve our own financial position and our profitability?”

He envisions a future where data serves broader strategic goals, creating tailored products, enhancing customer engagement, and driving profitability. What makes this vision particularly motivating for him is not just the opportunity but the environment in which he gets to pursue it.

“It’s getting to exercise those opportunities, working within a company, which I feel positive about when it comes to culture. It is what excites me the most.”

Swamy highlights the collaborative spirit and shared enthusiasm for data across the organization. He says, “Every single person that I meet with at work is open and excited about the possibilities of using data for all of the reasons and all of the purposes that I just talked about.”

In his view, this powerful combination of opportunities and culture fuels his excitement at a “super macro level.”

Data culture: Foundations, upskilling, and democratization

Highlighting the solid data foundations at Citizens, Swamy states that the company has been on a transformative path over the past four to five years, migrating applications and data to the cloud with AWS.

This move, says Swamy, has laid the groundwork for a modern, scalable, and accessible data infrastructure. He mentions that this journey has been marked by deliberate and thoughtful investment, leading to data assets that are ahead of the curve in their sophistication.

While the technical foundation is strong, Swamy sees the next big opportunity in fostering a data-driven culture. He says, “Now on the culture front it is about how you get people to use that data in the best possible way for decision-making.”

To achieve this, he outlines several key focus areas, including

• Outreach and awareness: Focusing on the kind of outreach the data team does so that users are aware of all available data sets.
• Upskilling and enablement: Upskilling by training on the latest tools, enabling them to use data in all its richness.
• Talent and mindset: Assessing the talent model to see whether people are demonstrating the requisite curiosity and problem-solving mindset.

Swamy describes this evolution as a “constant upleveling,” requiring ongoing refinement of both the data environment and the talent landscape.

A key example of the bank’s inclusive approach to data culture is a broad-based training program that has been rolled out across the organization.

Swamy says that the results speak for themselves: “Every month we have a leaderboard of who are the people, who are the top trainees, who spend the most amount of time getting trained on the platform. Invariably, if you look at the top ten, seven or eight are people who are not in a data analytics job family.”

This kind of participation signals a true culture shift, where data fluency is becoming a shared language across departments.

Shift in data discussion

Moving forward, Swamy shares that a key shift is taking place in how data is being discussed and utilized at Citizens. Conversations are now more focused on understanding root causes and underlying trends rather than questioning the accuracy of the data itself.

He attributes this change to significant investments in data quality, which have built confidence in the metrics being used. As a result, teams are now engaging in more insightful discussions, such as:

• What’s driving certain outcomes?
• How do current metrics compare with previous periods?
• What are the second-order effects behind the trends?
• What test-and-learn approaches can be applied to refine hypotheses?

This shift, Swamy notes, is fostering richer, more strategic decision-making across the organization. He also highlights the increased adoption of the bank’s internal Data Marketplace which has seen usage grow 15 to 20 times over the last year and a half. Swamy sees this as a clear sign of both an improved data environment and growing user engagement in leveraging data to drive value for customers and the business.

Making data accessible: Impact of data marketplace

Delving deeper into Data Marketplace, Swamy says it is a platform designed to make data more accessible, usable, and impactful for business users across the enterprise. He points out a common challenge in large enterprises: the sheer scale and fragmentation of data.

Expecting business users to navigate such complexity, Swamy affirms, is simply unrealistic. “If you expect any business user to have a good picture in their head of what is actually in each of those tens of thousands of tables, that’s going to be an impossible task.”

To tackle this, Swamy and his team designed the Data Marketplace with a few critical steps:

• Domain-based organization: Divided the data ecosystem into domains wherein the data remains grouped.
• Rejoined, curated tables: Leveraged subject-matter experts to rejoin huge quantities of data to create more consumable tables.

Additionally, he says, “For most users, the needs of the user can be met by some of these pre-curated tables.”

Furthermore, Swamy emphasizes the importance of making that data truly usable by providing multiple, user-friendly access points:

• Dashboards for quick insights
• SQL query interfaces for those who want to interact directly with the data
• Data extracts that allow users to apply filters and pull datasets into their own workspace

Concluding, he sees this work as fundamentally improving how data is consumed across the bank.

CDO Magazine appreciates Krish Swamy for sharing his insights with our global community.