New York: Jane Fraser appointed as Chief Executive of Wall Street’s Citi Group and third largest bank in US on Thursday. She will be its Chief Executive in February.

Fraser, the bank’s President and head of Global Consumer Banking business, will succeed Michael Corbat, who has served as Chief Executive since 2012. Fraser was teed up as bank’s next leader last year, when she was promoted to her current role. Fraser (53) will join a very small group of female leaders at major corporations. There are only 31 women among the CEOs of the 500 companies that makeup the S & P 500 stock index, according to the advocacy group catalyst.

It’s frustrating that this moment has been so long incoming, said Rob Blackwell, the Chief Content officer for promontory inter-financial network, which provides services for banks. Fraser will have no female counterparts among the 10 largest US banks. At a hearing of the house financial services committee last April, one law maker asked Corbat and six of his spheres, from J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street- to raise their hand if they believed a woman or person of colour would succeed them, none did.

Fraser’s promotion, where she will oversee a bank with $ 1.96 trillion in assests, immediately drew kudos from other powerful woman on Wall Street. Bank of America’s Chief Operating Officer, Cathy Bessant, who was widely seen as a top candidate to take over as Chief Executive of Wells Fargo when the bank was searching for a new leader last year, praised the announcement in a post on twitter on Thursday.