Citi takes everything it does seriously, but there is a special place in its collective consciousness for transaction services. This often-sprawling area of financial services, which chief executive Jane Fraser calls the crown jewel of the bank, is the beating heart of all Citi stands for.
The US bank’s strength was to spot early on how Covid was changing supply chains and accelerating changes in how its clients, both corporate and financial, operate. Big corporates must be digitally nimble. They want to realize individual payments in real time, then be able to move the capital they earn around the organization.
This is also driving change within a vast cross-section of banking still referred to internally as treasury and trade services. And this is where Citi comes in.
“We are not only focused on treasury needs but also thinking about how we support our clients’ sales activities as supply chains and corridors shift,” says Rajesh Mehta, Asia Pacific head of treasury and trade solutions (TTS). “And as business models shift to serving the customer directly, the focus is on serving the end-client.”
Mehta describes TTS as the “foot through the door” with clients, adding: “Our business is no longer a provider of back- and middle-office services. We are in the centre of it all.”
TTS posted a 32% year-on-year rise in global revenues in 2022, boosted by the introduction of Citi 7-Day Sweeps in 33 markets, the industry’s first 24/7 US dollar-denominated clearing and instant payments platform. More than 150 clients in Korea are already using the service.
Its real-time On-Demand Sweeps solution, which helps clients to dynamically control their working capital, was enabled for 57 Chinese holding companies. Also in 2022, its first multinational client was approved under China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s cross-border sweeps programme, which gives the bank an expanded foreign exchange quota of 80%, up from 30%.
Citi was ranked number one in payables finance and commercial cards in 2023 by Coalition Greenwich, in Asia ex-Japan, and number-one in TTS, global trade, cash management, commercial cards, and payables and receivables in Japan.
Innovation continues to be at the heart of everything we do
Rajesh Mehta
During the awards period, Citi unveiled a centralized billing platform to eight more markets in Asia Pacific, covering 70% of the region, making billing and reconciliation simpler and more uniform. Its Interest Optimization service, launched last year, gives clients end-to-end onboarding across 12 Asia markets, with automated real-time auto-check of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act account documentation – essential for US-facing clients.
The bank has redeployed capital heavily in recent years in key segments, with TTS a clear beneficiary. Its global reach and digital prowess make it hard to beat in transaction services. Citi Instant Payments offers direct access to 33 instant payments systems in more than 60 countries, with payments volumes up 67% year on year in Asia. Its CitiConnect Application Programming Interface (API) platform processed 493 million API calls in Asia in 2022 across more than 100 APIs, with call numbers up 169% year on year in the first quarter of 2023.
“Innovation continues to be at the heart of everything we do,” adds Mehta. “We’re building for the future, taking more calculated risks on new propositions and experimenting, so that our business is future-ready to support our clients through the next phase of change and technology disruption. The end-goal is to ensure we have a business model that supports our clients’ growth, expansion and commercial activities, wherever they choose to do business.”
