Singapore – Underlying its continued commitment to providing innovative solutions to clients, Citi’s Global Transaction Services (GTS) business has opened the Citi Innovation Lab in Singapore that comprises a Client Experience Center and a Client Collaboration Center. The opening marks the first such Innovation Lab for the bank’s institutional clients in Asia Pacific.
The Innovation Lab uses new web, mobile, supply chain and analytics technologies to engage Citi’s institutional clients more innovatively and to create the most effective solutions and products for them. In the Innovation Lab, Citi demonstrates its latest transaction banking solutions and clients can “test drive” them through live demonstrations with situation analysis and discussions with GTS’ product experts.
“Innovation has always been a driving force for our growth, and the challenge is to continually innovate and invest in new technologies and new capabilities to maintain our market leadership. This Innovation Lab will be an important contributor to our future growth in Global Transaction Services,” said Anthony Nappi, Region Head, Asia Pacific, Global Transaction Services.
The Innovation Lab is fully interactive and globally-linked, allowing Citi to connect with clients, global colleagues and experts for discussions on future needs and collaboration with the bank’s clients. Solutions that may have taken weeks previously are now being completed in a matter of days or hours.
A recent example of a solution developed was a new mobile collections solution for Coca-Cola that was a ‘market first’ in India, Korea and China to capture its C2B digital payment flows. The mobile browser-based application allows clients to receive notifications and authorize payments using their mobile phones.
There are currently greater than 10 clients who are collaborating on ideas and testing solutions for various business challenges in the lab, ranging from working capital solutions to intelligent cash forecasting, optimizing investment choices to instant reconciliations.
“In a volatile and ever-changing world, it is important for clients to be able to test various scenarios and the impact they may have on their business. The lab will play an important role in helping our clients navigate uncertain markets. The lab overcomes the challenge of getting clients to visualize new solutions developed for them, a process that used to take weeks and months can now be done in hours,” said Anthony Nappi.
The lab is staffed by 12 people, comprising GTS product experts and people from outside the banking industry.
This is the first Innovation Lab that Citi has created in Asia Pacific, with another two in San Francisco and Dublin.
Partners for the new lab include the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. Citi has a long standing partnership with the NUS such as sponsoring projects for their Design Thinking course and providing innovation training to their staff. In return, academics from NUS have contributed to developing and refining the ideas that the Innovation Lab is working on. Citi has also extended the relationship by providing internship opportunities as well as teaching the fundamentals of transaction banking to some of their students and will soon co-publish some thought-leadership articles in the world of transaction services innovation.
Professor Bernard Yeung, Dean of the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School says, ‘”NUS is proud to partner Citi in this business innovation, providing our academic expertise to developing cutting-edge research in transaction services. Our alliance to date has also resulted in various meaningful engagements, such as Citi’s sponsorship of projects in our MBA curriculum and provision of internship opportunities to our students. This alliance is the first of its kind between an academic and financial institution and is an affirmation of the School’s synergy with the industry. We look forward to a fruitful relationship as we break new ground together.”