Citi Named Celent's 2019 Model Bank of the Year

New York – Citi has been named as Celent's 2019 Model Bank of the Year. Celent bestowed this prestigious award to Citi in recognition of the global achievements of its Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) business' efforts to drive transformational innovation and digitization for the benefit of its clients. Citi earned top honors from a highly competitive field of 140 nominations submitted by 80 financial institutions from 30 countries.

Citi's winning submission included eight new global digital treasury initiatives launched in 2018 as part of the bank's strategic commitment to its clients to provide a full range of digital, mobile-enabled platforms, tools and analytics tailored to meet their evolving treasury management and working capital requirements.

"Citi is truly honored to receive the Celent 2019 Model Bank of the Year Award. It shows our unwavering commitment to our clients to be the financial ecosystem driving global commerce. Our digital transformation strategies are core to helping our clients succeed in the digital economy through improved profitability and enhanced client experience," said Naveed Sultan, Citi's Global Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions. "Our long-term commitment to our clients is to be the enabler of digital commerce helping them drive positive business outcomes for their companies."

Patricia Hines, Head of Corporate Banking for Celent, in announcing the award, said: "We are delighted to announce Citi as Celent Model Bank of the Year 2019 in recognition of Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions business' efforts to embrace change and differentiate with digital. Our annual Model Bank program is incredibly competitive with nearly 140 institutions submitting. This large number of submissions is inclusive of the high quality of work going on in the industry, as financial institutions continue to transform and innovate. Citi is at the pinnacle of these efforts."

TTS Award-Winning Digital Solutions and Services
Celent considered five areas of evaluation when selecting Citi as the overall 2019 Model Bank of the Year winner, including customer experience, innovative products, operations and risk, legacy transformation, and deployment of emerging advanced technologies. The following digital solutions and services from Citi were recognized:

Digital Connectivity innovation:

• CitiDirect BE® Digital Onboarding – Provides clients with an accelerated onboarding experience, replacing the legacy paper and courier-based documentation process with a digital platform, including the use of electronic signatures, as well as leveraging existing data assets to complete KYC and account opening requirements. Through the new solution, clients are able to complete their account openings within two days.
• CitiDirect BE® Biometric Authentication – Allows clients to login to CitiDirect BE in just seconds. Once users have set up their biometric authentication functionality on their mobile device, they no longer have to use a traditional token to generate one-time passwords, for both mobile and desktop. By leveraging a human characteristic, biometric authentication is not only convenient; it is secure.
• CitiConnect® API Developer Portal – A one-stop hub where clients can access the latest documentation on Citi APIs and sandbox environment. Usage of the Developer Portal is expected to shorten the client onboarding process, accelerate technical development, and improve the quality of technology integration between Citi and its clients.
• CitiConnect® Testing Portal – This innovative portal shortens implementation and testing cycles, eliminates manual processes, and lets clients proceed at their own pace during the file development and testing process.

Product and Service Innovation:

• Citi® Payment Insights – By leveraging new technologies such as SWIFT's gpi initiative, APIs, cloud computing, and Big Data, TTS now provides clients with a simple, digital experience that delivers the transparency and convenience clients are requesting, and that is often experienced with consumer transactions.
• Citi® Smart Match – Uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help clients increase the efficiency, reduce operating costs and automate the process of matching open invoices to payments received in order to reduce days sales outstanding, and release credit lines so the company can sell more to its clients.
• Citi Hybrid Earnings Credit Rate (ECR) Account – Allows clients to completely offset transaction fees with ECR balances and earn hard dollar interest on any excess balances, all within a single account.
• Citi® Commercial Card Emerging Technologies – Citi leveraged data science and machine learning principles to identify patterns in historical commercial card spend activity to forecast future client spend and to predict a client's short-term credit requirements based on seasonal peaks with 95% accuracy.
• Citi® Payment Exchange – Provides a single payment touchpoint for various U.S. payment types, including Zelle, Virtual Card, ACH, card, and check.

Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) enables our clients' success by providing an integrated suite of innovative and tailored cash management and trade finance services to multinational corporations, financial institutions and public sector organizations across the globe. Based on the foundation of the industry's largest proprietary network with banking licenses in over 98 countries and globally integrated technology platforms, TTS continues to lead the way in offering the industry's most comprehensive range of digitally enabled treasury, trade and liquidity management solutions.