SWIFTNet™
Corporates and Member Administered Closed User Group (MA-CUG)

SWIFT has established a new status that allows Corporates, particularly high volume corporates, to gain the benefits of the SWIFT network and infrastructure, called “Member Administered Closed User Group.” The participant, in this case, is only authorized to exchange with members (banks) who set up services in a restricted area called “Closed Users Group”. Existing SWIFT FIN services as well as a range of new services can be delivered across an MA-CUG.

Citi has purchased a Closed User Group for our customers benefit and currently have 7 active customers.

Citi’s MA-CUG allows direct communication between Citi’s clients and enabled Citi locations. Citi’s MA-CUG clients may be either corporates or financial institutions. The client must join Citi’s MA-CUG as a “Service Participant within Member Administered CUGs”. Clients that are already SWIFT Members, Sub-Members, or Participants may also participate in Citi MA-CUG.

For Corporates, CUGs provide opportunities to improve their connectivity and straight through processing (STP) of financial transactions with their banks. Joining a Citi CUG provides corporates with access to a reliable, secure private network and standardized security for all communications with us. You can communicate in standard global delivery platform, with a single connection and security model thereby avoiding the need to maintain multiple proprietary systems. Finally, because Citi’s high volume use of SWIFT entitles us to a premier pricing tier, Citi’s revenue billing CUG provides our corporate customers with the most advantageous message transmission fee schedule.

Companies have testified that the benefits of joining SWIFTNet™ outweigh the costs. Some have openly a desire to replace their own internal networks with a SWIFT CUG. Corporates need to fully integrate their back office systems with SWIFT to fully benefit. CUGs are especially beneficial to high volume corporates. Contact you relationship manager to hear more about the benefits of joining a Citi CUG.

SWIFT does not support the actual business applications or services delivered across that SWIFT infrastructure. Citi’s MA-CUG leverages SWIFT’s FIN messaging to communicate with our clients (MA-CUG participants), including those that are not financial institutions. However, only those SWIFT FIN messages currently supported by that location or branch will be supported through the MA-CUG.

A MA-CUG participant may only exchange messages with the Service Administrator (and its Service Administrator destinations. Direct participant-to-participant communications are not permitted within MA-CUGs.