Summary
Naveed Sultan is globally recognised international banker and advisor to boards, CEOs, senior business leaders, and policymakers in areas of strategy, digital transformation, sustainability, leadership, and culture change. He is also an entrepreneur, investor, academic and philanthropist. Currently, he also serves as Professor of Practice at Imperial College Business School and Co-Director of its Centre of Financial Technology. His scholarly endeavours are digital transformation, financial technologies, responsible leadership, sustainability.
In his long and distinguished career, he held very senior leadership positions and led several multibillion-dollar global businesses. Amongst others, Naveed Sultan served as the Chairman of Citi's Institutional Clients Group (ICG). As Chairman, Mr. Sultan developed and led Citi's digital policy, strategy, and advisory practice. This practice provided valuable guidance to governments, helping them develop policies to digitize their economies, particularly their financial systems, while ensuring stability. It also offered strategic insights to corporates and financial institutions seeking to adapt and thrive in an increasingly digital world. He has a deep understanding of distributed finance, emerging financial technologies, digital assets, crypto currencies including CBDCs, stable coins its implications for financial institutions and financial system and accordingly he advises relevant stakeholders.
Before his role as Chairman, Naveed Sultan served as the Global Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) at Citi. This multi-billion-dollar business is focused on integrated working capital solutions, including payments, trade and supply chain services, export agency finance, liquidity and investment management, wholesale card services, information services, receivables, consulting, and digital services. TTS served a diverse client base, including public sector entities, corporate and commercial banks, and financial institutions worldwide.
Under Mr. Sultan's leadership, TTS became a market leader known for its capital efficiency, operational excellence, and sustained revenue growth. Mr. Sultan's strategic acumen and foresight in anticipating market, economic, and societal shifts enabled him to create economic value while ensuring systemic responsibility. Notably, he facilitated the liberalization of financial markets in Pakistan, set up one of the first financial leasing companies, and executed the first Management Buyout (MBO) in Pakistan. In Saudi Arabia, he pioneered a technology-driven solution for worker remittances and built a leading transaction bank.
In Europe, as the leader of Citi's transaction banking franchise, Mr. Sultan repositioned the business post-European Monetary Union (EMU), improving market infrastructure efficiency and profitability. His strategic initiatives transformed a loss-making business into a profitable one, attracting substantial investments. Naveed Sultan's strategic vision for Citi also positioned the bank as a financial platform for global commerce, attracting significant investments and rebalancing the company's portfolio.
In support of innovation and responsible leadership, Mr. Sultan established Innovation Centres, fostering an ecosystem of innovation across Citi. He collaborated with Imperial College Business School to create the Centre for Financial Technology, developed the Digital Money Index, and organised the annual Digital Money Symposium to facilitate the shift to digital financial services.
As Chairman of ICG, Mr. Sultan introduced a unique Digital Policy, Strategy, and Advisory practice, emphasizing digital policy as a new policy tool and promoting sustainability as a growth agenda. Citi is the only financial institution with such a practice.
Mr. Sultan also serves as a member of Imperial Business School’s Advisory Board. He has previously served as the elected chair of the Transaction Banking Global Leaders Group and served on the Boards of Citibank Europe plc, Citibank A.S.,Turkey, LCH.Clearnet and Smart London Board - an Advisory Board to the Mayor of London. In addition to the establishment of Imperial College Business School’s Centre for Financial Technology, Mr. Sultan also led the founding of Imperial’s Centre for Responsible Leadership with the objective to equip todays and tomorrow’s leaders with skills and values which enables them to deliver an optimum economic, societal, and systemically responsible outcomes. He is an advisor to both Centres.
He holds an MBA from Institute of Business Administration (IBA) University of Punjab, Pakistan and Master of Science (S.M) from MIT Sloan School.
Media
- Holistic Digital Policy. .
- Insider
- Credit Suisse
- Bank of America
- Responsible Leadership.
- Digital Money Index
- Managing Digital Money
- MIT Sloan Fellows MBAs