Top 10: CPOs in the Finance Industry

Finance is a people business dressed up as a numbers one.

Behind every balance sheet is a workforce of hundreds of thousands that someone has to hire, pay and hold onto, all while the firm cuts costs and fights for the same scarce talent as everyone else.

These are the chief people officers carrying the heaviest load in the sector, ranked by the revenue their companies turn over, from a German insurer with a top line bigger than most economies to the Wall Street banks whose talent wars never stop.

Between them, they stand behind workforces that generate more than US$1tn a year.

10. Aileen Taylor

Company: HSBC
Location: London, UK
Revenue: US$66bn

HSBC gave Aileen Taylor an unusually wide brief. Since October 2024 she has been Group Chief Human Resources and Governance Officer, bolting governance onto the people job at a bank of roughly 211,000 staff.

She took the role as new CEO Georges Elhedery reshaped the top team, inheriting a workforce mid-restructuring and spread from Hong Kong to London. Running HR across that many markets, on around US$66bn of revenue, is one of the most geographically stretched people jobs in global finance.

9. Cameron Rice

Company: Morgan Stanley
Location: New York, US​​​​​​​
Revenue: US$70.6bn

Morgan Stanley reshaped its top HR job after Mandell Crawley moved to Chief Client Officer in 2025, and Cameron Rice now holds the CHRO title in a co-leadership setup.

The firm has pivoted hard from trading towards wealth and investment management under CEO Ted Pick, which changes the kind of talent it fights for.

On roughly US$70.6bn of revenue and around 80,000 staff, its culture, pay and retention calls sit with an HR team learning to serve two very different businesses at once.

8. Monique Herena

Company: American Express
Location: New York, US​​​​​​​
Revenue: US$72bn

American Express does not employ an HR chief. It has a Chief Colleague Experience Officer, the title Monique Herena has held since 2019, and the wording is the strategy.

Amex runs on service, so it treats its roughly 74,000 employees, its "colleagues", as an experience to design rather than a cost to administer. That remit covers talent, leadership, pay and wellbeing across a company turning over about US$72bn, and Amex's regular place near the top of best-employer rankings is the scoreboard she is judged on.

7. Shurawl Sibblies

Company: MetLife
Location: New York, US
Revenue: US$77bn

Shurawl Sibblies took the top HR job at MetLife in August 2024, joining the executive team of one of the world's largest life insurers.

Its workforce of around 45,000 is small for this list, but the US$77bn behind it is not. MetLife's strategy runs on actuaries, technologists and salespeople in equal measure, and hiring and holding that mix is the assignment.

As the newest people chief on this list, she has the freshest mandate to reshape it.

6. Sara Wechter

Company: Citigroup
Location: New York, US
Revenue: US$81bn

Few people jobs in finance are as sprawling as Sara Wechter's. As Citigroup's CHRO since 2018, she oversees over 200,000 employees across more than 90 markets, through one of the most drastic overhauls any bank has attempted.

Citi's simplification under CEO Jane Fraser has meant cuts, exits and restructures, all of which land on HR first. On around US$81bn of revenue, keeping the remaining talent steady while the org chart is redrawn beneath them is the defining test of her tenure.

5. Bei Ling

Company: Wells Fargo
Location: San Francisco, US
Revenue: US$82bn

Wells Fargo hired Bei Ling as its head of HR to help rebuild a bank from the inside. Since arriving from JPMorgan, she has run people strategy for roughly 215,000 staff as Wells finally emerged from the asset cap that constrained it for years, freeing CEO Charlie Scharf to grow again.

Growth means hiring, and hiring against the very rivals above and below it on this list. On about US$82bn of revenue, her job is to staff a bank moving from years of remediation back into expansion.

4. Karima Silvent

Company: AXA
Location: Paris, France​​​​​​​
Revenue: €87.3bn (US$94bn)

AXA runs one of Europe's largest workforces, and Karima Silvent runs its people. As Group CHRO and a member of the management committee, she oversees more than 90,000 employees across the French insurer's operations, on revenue of €87.3bn (US$94bn).

AXA has leaned into flexible work and reskilling harder than most of its peers, casting HR as central to how a firm founded in the 1980s from far older roots keeps modernising.

Steering culture across dozens of countries and languages, from Paris to Asia, makes hers one of the most international briefs in the sector.

3. Sheri Bronstein

Company: Bank of America
Location: Charlotte, US
Revenue: US$102bn

Sheri Bronstein has spent more than a decade as Bank of America's top people executive, latterly titled Chief People Officer, which for a bank of roughly 213,000 employees is among the biggest HR jobs in America.

She sits on the executive management team and has pushed hard on internal mobility and early-career hiring. On about US$102bn of revenue under CEO Brian Moynihan, her long tenure gives her something rare at this level, the institutional memory to move a giant workforce without breaking it.

2. Robin Leopold

Company: JPMorgan Chase
Location: New York, US​​​​​​​
Revenue: US$182bn

Robin Leopold runs the largest workforce on this list. As Head of HR at JPMorgan Chase since 2018, she oversees more than 310,000 staff at a bank turning over some US$182bn, the biggest in the Western world and second only to Allianz here by revenue.

She sits on the operating committee under Jamie Dimon, in a firm that has been blunt about using AI to reshape roles even as it keeps hiring. Cutting some jobs while building others, at that scale, is the balancing act her function owns.

1. Renate Wagner

Company: Allianz
Location: Munich, Germany
Revenue: €179.8bn (US$194bn)

By revenue, no one on this list oversees more than Renate Wagner. As the Allianz board member for People and Culture, she runs HR for the German group whose top line, €179.8bn (US$194bn), edges out every bank here, and whose workforce numbers around 157,000 across roughly 70 countries.

Her portfolio is unusually broad even by board standards, spanning People and Culture alongside Asia Pacific and mergers and acquisitions, a sign of how senior the people agenda sits at Allianz. Steering culture and talent for the world's largest insurer, on the biggest revenue base in this ranking, puts her on top.