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Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions: How to Optimize Your Treasury Needs on a Global Scale

Citi eCommerce Sector I Optimizing Your Treasury Needs

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<h3 class="h3 text-center text-citi-blue mb-15">A new world of client services is on the horizon for banking clients</h3>
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<div class="text-center col-md-4 col-12 offset-lg-4"><img class="mb-15 rounded-circle" src="https://icg.citi.com/rcs/icgPublic/storage/public/sandra-peterson.jpg" alt="Sandra Peterson" />
<p><strong>Sandra Peterson</strong>,<br />Global Head<br />Client Service<br />Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi</p>
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<h3 class="text-citi-blue">Institutional banking clients make no secret about it: they want their banks to deliver service that is fast, easy, and accurate. Even more, they demand support 24X7, as they have come to expect around-the-clock immediacy and convenience based on their experiences as consumers.</h3>
<h3 class="text-citi-blue">This article takes a look at how banks, including Citi, are responding to these expectations and creating a more modern service paradigm.</h3>
<h4 class="text-citi-blue">Accurate and reliable information</h4>
<p>Looking through the lens of the client, Citi realizes that harnessing data, specifically &ldquo;big data&rdquo;, is essential to meeting the demands of clients in a world dominated by digitization and automation. Clients want frictionless processes, ability to self-serve and access to all of their data in a user friendly way, to be able to focus on what matters to them.</p>
<p>For banks, creating a better client experience in a data-driven environment often begins with the assembly of disparate data elements from multiple systems and sources around the globe into a cohesive framework. Creating this &ldquo;single source of truth&rdquo; establishes the foundation for providing clients with direct visibility into up-to-date information about their accounts and transactions across the globe. To be certain, creating a cohesive data framework across a large global bank such as Citi, which processes $4 trillion daily across more than 96 countries, is no small undertaking.</p>
<p>Citi began its journey to create a single source of truth three years ago, with technologists and big data specialists tackling the requisite back-end data mining, mapping, and programming. One of the first online service tools to evolve from this effort was Citi<sup style="font-size: x-small;">&reg;</sup> Payment Insights (CPI), which gives clients direct online access to real-time details about their payment transactions, including processing status, correspondent bank charges, and the amount credited to the beneficiary. They can even monitor their payments via a visual tracker, making payment monitoring akin to tracking a postal package. Citi has developed a number of reporting capabilities in CitiDirect BE<sup style="font-size: x-small;">&reg;</sup> as well as APIs and online knowledge centers so clients can perform actions on their own that historically required engaging a service representative, such as returning unrecognized payments, via Citi Service Insights (CSI). Activities that previously took several days can now be accomplished within minutes via a few keystrokes.</p>
<p>Access to data globally through the &ldquo;single source of truth&rdquo; is also leveraged in Citi&rsquo;s service models, as Client Service Officers can now cover clients for multiple geographies providing day-to-day transactional support and through the availability of the data Citi can significantly reduce client touchpoints, which is often cited as a challenge for clients with centralized treasury functions working with several local banks.</p>
<h3 class="text-citi-blue">Demands for quick, easy, and accurate client service are being met with new innovations and service delivery models that are changing the face of client service.</h3>
<h4 class="text-citi-blue">Accelerated response times</h4>
<p>When it comes to providing faster client service, CPI is just one example of how banks are putting big data and new technologies to work to respond to client demands. The compilation of global account inventories is another. In the past, information about accounts was maintained in local country systems, and clients depended on their service representative to collate it. As one might imagine, assembling an inventory of accounts across dozens of countries was highly manual, prone to manual error, and could take several days to complete for a large multinational client. Now, thanks to Citi&rsquo;s single source of truth and digitization efforts, clients can directly access this information themselves in a matter of minutes.</p>
<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) is also playing a big role in streamlining and accelerating service response times. A component of AI known as natural language processing (NLP), for example, can take unformatted text in a client&rsquo;s email or SWIFT service query and convert it into structured data. NLP can automatically classify data such as account numbers, transaction numbers, payment amounts, and beneficiary names to determine the intent of a request. Using pre-programmed algorithms, NLP will pull data from the bank&rsquo;s system and prepare a response to the client &mdash; almost instantly.</p>
<p>At Citi, NLP is also being used to interrogate internal and external databases to automatically respond to queries related to a payment confirmation. Electronic inquiries about such requests are interpreted and payment statuses are retrieved from Citi&rsquo;s systems or SWIFT&rsquo;s Global Payments Initiative (GPI) tracker. The process now takes mere seconds, compared to days when the confirmation was reliant on manual touchpoints and messaging across the bank network. Citi continues to work with SWIFT and industry partners to further develop digital capabilities for inquiry management including gpi Case Resolution (gCase) which will establish a community inquiry tool amongst correspondent banks.</p>
<h4 class="text-citi-blue">Getting in front of client needs</h4>
<p>New technologies and automation are reshaping the client-service landscape in seemingly endless ways, promising to continuously reduce friction, delays, and costs. Even in a world where technology is king and digital tools offer smart ways of getting fast and accurate answers with minimal effort, there will always be a need for personal interactions. As the needs of institutional clients evolve and bank services and products change, so too will the service delivery models of banks.</p>
<p>Take the role of service representatives, for example. Looking ahead, rather than simply fielding and responding to client queries, they will be expected to play a more active role in anticipating and identifying the needs of clients. If, for instance, a representative notices that a client is calling at the beginning of every month for a specific report the client could actually download on their own, he or she could guide them on how to get it. As another example, if a representative is aware that there will be system maintenance during a time that a client typically performs a specific task, such as reconciling accounts, he or she could get ahead of what could be a frustrating experience for the client and advise them to plan accordingly.</p>
<p>In addition, service representatives will also be more involved in identifying tools and services that empower clients to get what they want, when they want it. More of their time will be spent guiding treasury staff to make the most of new digital tools and technologies at their disposal. In essence, client service teams will shoulder more responsibility for helping clients become more productive and more efficient.</p>
<h4 class="text-citi-blue">The path forward</h4>
<p>What does all this mean for institutional banking clients? Their demands for quick, easy, and accurate client service are being met with new innovations and service delivery models that are changing the face of client service.</p>
<p>Tomorrow&rsquo;s digital tools are providing smart ways of getting quick answers to service queries with minimal effort. At the same time, the roles of service representatives who are on the frontline with clients are also being redefined. With an eye towards using innovation, insights, and interactions, these efforts aim to not only meet client needs, but exceed them. Banks realize that to maintain a competitive advantage they must remain a step ahead of their clients, identifying the next-best banking solution with service that is smarter, better, and faster.</p>
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Digitization: Client Service Gets a Whole New Look

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<h3 class="h3 text-center text-citi-blue mb-15">The commercial card industry is racing to catch up with consumer offerings. Clients will be the beneficiaries, writes Eileen Wende, Commercial Cards: Digital Channels.</h3>
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<div class="text-center col-md-4 col-12 offset-lg-4"><img class="mb-15 rounded-circle" src="https://icg.citi.com/rcs/icgPublic/storage/public/eileen-wende.jpg" alt="Eileen Wende" />
<p><strong>Eileen Wende</strong>,<br />Digital Channels,<br />Citi Commercial Cards</p>
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<p>Application programming interfaces (APIs) play an increasingly important role in making our lives easier, even if we aren&rsquo;t aware of it. These computing interfaces enable different systems, technologies and parties to interact seamlessly with one another. They already play an important role in global banking for both consumers and corporates, and look set to become ever more important for commercial cards in the future.</p>
<p>The adoption of APIs is not just being driven by the improved convenience and functionality they offer banking clients &ndash; although this is important. In addition, regulators and governments around the world are putting APIs at the center of strategies to improve the performance of national banking systems, increase competitiveness, and enhance security and resilience in the financial system.</p>
<p>Within the commercial cards space, banks and other card providers recognize the potential opportunities offered by APIs to create a connectivity layer that links ecosystems, technologies and organizations together and makes it easier to modify data and forge partnerships. As in the broader banking world, APIs enable these connections to be made much quicker and with fewer resources than in the past. That should help lower costs and accelerate the introduction of new functionality.</p>
<h3 class="text-citi-blue">How can APIs deliver value?</h3>
<p>There are three main types of APIs; private; partner; and open. In relation to commercial cards, private APIs are internal to a bank. They can be used to improve bank processes and increase operational efficiency by reducing the administrative burden. In particular, they have a role to play in overcoming a reliance on legacy technology, which almost all banks have built up over many years, without requiring its (costly) wholesale replacement.</p>
<p>Partner APIs currently offer one of the greatest opportunities for commercial cards. They can be either client or partner facing and enable banks to expand their ecosystems and improve inter-connectivity beyond traditional channels such as file or host-to-host channels. Partner APIs can be valuable in addressing the challenges of an evolving regulatory landscape. For instance, in the context of data privacy or security, meeting local or regional requirements has traditionally been timeconsuming and costly. APIs developed by partners have quickly become an essential tool to meet such regional requirements and close regulatory gaps.</p>
<p>Public or open APIs, which are made publicly available to software developers and other parties, currently have limited use cases for commercial cards. In the consumer credit card market, issuers open APIs to third parties to allow their applications to access cardholder accounts, to provide accountrelated alerts or information about bill payments and fund transfers, for instance. In the future, as commercial card APIs become more mature, a use case for public APIs could emerge, allowing third parties to initiate financial services on behalf of a cardholder.</p>
<h3 class="text-citi-blue">What do APIs mean for clients?</h3>
<p>APIs enable not just commercial card issuers but also fintechs, clients and other parties to leverage existing digital infrastructures or build new ecosystems to interact with each other and exchange information in a more systematic and scalable way. By doing so, they help to create opportunities to reduce process complexity and improve levels of automation. However, all commercial card providers need to catch up with the advances that have taken place in the consumer credit card space.</p>
<p>The time is ripe for API innovation in the commercial cards market. Clients are increasingly doing business across different industries, with various commercial card use cases and potential challenges associated with managing commercial card program transaction flows. Multiple stakeholders and optionality inevitably increase complexity. An API-enabled ecosystem &ndash; rather than a file-based or web interface &ndash; helps to achieve greater flexibility and timeliness when exchanging such information.</p>
<p>While corporate client demand for commercial card APIs was initially driven by digital native companies and fintechs, traditional companies are increasingly interested in the potential use cases of APIs. Their goal is to gain low-cost real-time access to commercial card data, make real-time payments or perform account maintenance. This change is being prompted by the evolution of many companies&rsquo; business models, including increased direct-to-consumer activity and a move to a 24/7 business environment. Although demand for commercial card APIs is currently strongest in APAC and EMEA, it is expected that North America will soon follow suit.</p>
<h3 class="text-citi-blue">API use cases in commercial cards</h3>
<p>One of the most important issues for commercial card programs is client onboarding. APIs and the use of developer portals helps to give partner or client developers an opportunity to code at their own pace and integrate with the bank in a more self-service way than has historically been the case. The use of APIs and portals helps to provides developers with a sandbox environment, code samples in different languages and the ability to explore the system and information available, reducing time to integration.</p>
<p>Typically, the developers in such circumstances would be fintechs that Citi is partnering with for specific use cases or, alternatively, corporate clients. For example, a corporate client planning to use virtual cards will need to integrate with Citi to generate unique card numbers. Another scenario might involve a corporate HR system that automatically sends an API call to Citi to apply for a corporate card for a newly onboarded employee.</p>
<p>In the consumer space, developer portals can be fully open, with few restrictions on which entities take part and how APIs can be used. However, for corporate banking &ndash; which necessarily involves significant financial assets &ndash; it is important to go through due diligence and KYC procedures (not least to meet regulatory and compliance requirements).</p>
<p>More generally, it is essential that any API meets Citi&rsquo;s requirements for service levels and security. Stability, availability and quality of service are critical in financial services, for example, to mitigate against any risks. Keeping these requirements in mind, Citi&rsquo;s vision is to create an environment that is as open as possible in order to encourage innovation and creativity.</p>
<h3 class="text-citi-blue">APIs are key to Citi&rsquo;s digital strategy</h3>
<p>APIs are gaining momentum in the commercial cards space given their rapid deployment in the consumer card space and in other areas of corporate banking. However, APIs also clearly align with Citi&rsquo;s digital strategy of focusing on client pain points, in order to simplify our offering and deliver more value along the card account lifecycle &ndash; both before and after a commercial card transaction.</p>
<p>In line with these goals, Citi&rsquo;s roadmap includes virtual card payment initiation, life-cycle management and transaction reporting. The bank is also planning to use APIs for commercial card account maintenance, including setting credit limits, setting merchant categories accessible to cardholders, and account application functions through HR. In the future, Citi hopes to be able to use transactional data to provide clients with program insights in real time, highlighting potential savings or providing alerts when cardholders are spending with non-preferred vendors.</p>
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Why APIs Are About to Transform Commercial Cards

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