This year, the world’s best digital bank is also North America’s best digital bank. Citi continues to bolt clever new services onto its ever-expanding yet increasingly integrated digital platform and to upgrade at a furious pace.
This you would expect. But where Citi excels is in figuring out what clients will need a step or two in advance, then working assiduously to meet those expectations. It is a tough thing to do, yet the US firm manages it.
Take Commercial Bank Gateway, an online platform that gives the bank a single, holistic view of all its businesses with every commercial client. It allows full digital onboarding, servicing and product enrolment, offering clients full transparency of the entire process.
Citi’s banking, capital markets and advisory data science team in turn focuses on delivering data-driven insights across M&A, environmental, social and governance issues, capital markets transactions and capital allocation.
Collaboration is key to the bank’s digital endeavours. It is working in lockstep with blockchain-based supply-chain platform TradeLens to process 700 million transactions and six million documents a year. Fostering internal innovation is also an imperative. Citi’s D10X programme helps enterprising staffers test and launch their own business ideas.
In July 2021, the bank unveiled Citi Self Invest, a self-directed digital offering that gives clients the ability to make no-commission trades in stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, with no account minimums. Citi reckons 90% of users carried out their first investment transactions with the bank in the four months to the end of March 2022.
Custom Cash, the bank’s first ‘mobile-first’ credit card, made waves on its launch in June 2021. The no-annual-fee, cash-back credit card adapts automatically to spending trends and is fully digitalized, allowing customers to track the arrival of a physical card and immediately add it to their digital wallet.
“Citi is building an operating system of capabilities that allows us to build in control mechanisms from the start, quickly replicating core capabilities across the product suite and accelerating time to market,” says Michael Naggar, head of personal banking technology, Citi personal banking and wealth management. “Last year’s launch of the Citi Custom Cash credit card exemplified this new digital ecosystem approach.”
Citi is also working on services that seek to predict the future needs of customers. In April 2021, Citi announced plans to build an industry-led independent data and trading platform for structured credit and underlying collateral markets, with an initial focus on collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) and syndicated loans.
The past year really signalled a mindset shift with digital at the forefront of every Citi customer experience
Michael Naggar
The platform – called Project Octopus and tipped for launch in the second half of 2022 – will address key challenges in the CLO and loan markets for dealers and buy-side clients: efficiency, liquidity, and cost of execution.
Versana, another notable offering, is an industry-backed fintech that aims to make the syndicated loan market run better. The platform captures banks’ data directly from source in real time, providing unprecedented transparency into loan level details and lender portfolio positions. Co-founded by Citi, Versana aims to bring greater transparency, efficiency and focus to the $5 trillion syndicated loans market.
“With a branch-light footprint and increasing customer demand, we’ve historically been focused on building out our digital capabilities,” adds Naggar. “The past year really signalled a mindset shift with digital at the forefront of every Citi customer experience.”
