Citi Latin America Expands Digital Onboarding to Five New Countries as Institutional Clients Accelerate Adoption of Digital Channels during Q1 2020

June 01, 2020

Miami – Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) Latin America adds five new countries to its Digital Onboarding platform while seeing significant uptake in digital adoption in the first quarter of the year as the business supports clients' contingency situations during the pandemic. Highlights include:

300% increase in the number of banking accounts opened digitally
45% increase in digital banking platform activations

"Three years ago, we set ourselves the challenge to become Latin America's digital bank by the end of 2020. This meant not simply digitizing the way that clients interact with us at the front end, but end-to-end, across the entire bank," said Steve Donovan, Latin America Treasury and Trade Solutions Head. "This digital investment has been critical to supporting our clients effectively during both good times and bad, particularly as they move rapidly to business continuity mode and tackle a new and unprecedented set of challenges. I am enormously proud of my team, who have demonstrated unflinching commitment and concern for our clients, both as individuals and institutions, at a time of unprecedented change and personal anxiety."

CitiDirect BE® Digital Onboarding
First introduced in Latin America in Brazil in 2019.CitiDirect BE® Digital Onboarding enables Citi's clients to open additional or new banking accounts digitally in as quickly as two days, using electronic signatures and supported by a streamlined documentation process.

The new digital account opening experience for institutional clients is now available in 41 countries globally, including six in Latin America with five new markets just launched on May 18, 2020: Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Puerto Rico. This groundbreaking solution will be rolled out to six more countries in September this year.

Additionally, usage across all client-facing digital channels has grown over the first quarter of 2020 in Latin America, as clients switch to continuity-of-business (COB) modes, with remote work during the pandemic.

Clients have activated COB plans, and have had to rapidly reassess current payment methods, processes, risks and controls, and digitize manual processes. They are expanding their use of Citi platforms for a remote workforce, including mobile apps and use of biometrics, as well as digitizing documentation and moving to electronic signatures to complete the onboarding process.

"Every bank wants to be a digital bank, but this typically means opening up mobile capabilities to clients," said Driss Temsamani, Head of Digital Channels, Citi TTS Latin America. "At Citi, our digital banking strategy has been transformative across every aspect of our own operations, as well as client engagement. This has led to the development of a highly integrated channels strategy, but also industry first solutions such as digital onboarding. While the growth in digital adoption has steadily increased over recent years with the consumerization of corporate experiences, the adoption of CitiDirect BE® digital solutions has accelerated even faster as a result of the pandemic. There has been 45% growth in CitiDirect BE® (Citi's online/mobile banking platform for institutional clients) on an annual basis between March 2019 and March 2020 in Latin America."

Citi's digital onboarding solutions have enabled clients to set up new accounts and overcome major obstacles due to the pandemic, both domestically and overseas. Clients can complete the process of account opening using electronic signatures, with streamlined documentation.

Adoption of Digital Channels
The CitiDirect BE® platform provides access to global transaction capabilities, featuring new and innovative capabilities for desktop and mobile. These include simplified payments, biometric authentication, chat, and co-browse capabilities with a service representative.

CitiConnect® API usage has also surged in volume over the last year as many companies move towards seamless, real-time integration. In Latin America, e-commerce clients whose businesses are currently seeing rapid growth in volumes are driving adoption of APIs and increase in activity. The ongoing digitization efforts of companies across different industries, especially non-bank financial institutions, is also driving this trend in the region.

Read more about CitiDirect BE® Digital Onboarding, CitiDirect BE® and CitiConnect®.

Citi

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.

Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions
Citi 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 90 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.

Media Contact:

Alex Ravinet, Tel: +1 (305) 205-1006 Email: alexandra.ravinet@citi.com

Citi Latin America Expands Digital Onboarding to Five New Countries as Institutional Clients Accelerate Adoption of Digital Channels during Q1 2020

Citi

Media Contact:

Sign up to receive the latest from Citi.