In 2020 Citi added 11 new countries in Latin America to its digital onboarding platform, which now stands at 47 countries globally. Its global platform enables the US bank to provide unrivalled geographical breadth in its digitization efforts. Not only can the bank be more efficient itself – rolling out central innovations globally – but it also enables its multinational client list to embrace digital banking in most of the markets in which it operates.
In Latin America Citi is physically present in 21 countries – nearly double the number of any other bank – and in the past four years it has increased its market share in transaction services by four percentage points to 20%.
Citi’s transaction services in the region, led by Steve Donovan, have proven hugely popular, which is probably not a surprise given the rising need to work remotely. Also, the digital services, which have cut account opening times to 48 hours, help Citi’s clients by enabling the onboarding of their suppliers. For example, since this product was launched in the Andean cluster in 2020 more than 98% of Citi’s clients’ suppliers in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador were onboarded electronically.
The digitization push not only includes streamlining the documentation of account openings, Citi has also fully digitized its cash and liquidity products. It has introduced end-to-end trade finance capabilities that, in 2020, incorporate trade loans and a new supplier finance app.
In 2020 Citi also expanded its Spring by Citi offering to Mexico and Brazil – a service that helps clients sell online by accepting digital consumer payments, including cards, bank transfers and alternative payments such as electronic wallets and QR codes. The bank also added real-time reconciliation across channels and added 17 application programming interfaces (APIs) to its Latin America business. This is now the fastest growing region for the bank in terms of API adoption, with clients adding APIs to manage payments, FX and beneficiary validation and trade services.
