Citi Launches Complementary (Coupled) Services for Financial Institution Clients Adding Significant Transparency to Payment Transactions

Citi today announced that its Global Transaction Services unit has released a set of enhanced Payments reporting capabilities specifically designed for its Financial Institution (FI) clients.

As banks around the world emerge from the financial turmoil, there is a continuous need to manage intra-day liquidity and counter-party risks while improving operational efficiency in order to maximize margin. Additionally, changes in regulation have made it increasingly important for FIs to be able to monitor and review their payments at various points in the operational cycle.

Citi’s newly enhanced Payment Flow Manager (PFM) with added functionality gives users the legacy features of PFM, including real-time access to processing information and now, with these enhancements, greater control over their payment flows. These combined capabilities provide significant improvements in transparency for both Citi’s clients.

“We know that regulatory changes and FIs’ own needs to maintain liquidity have increased the demand for access to pertinent transaction details. These combined capabilities provide significant improvements in transparency for everyone involved in the payment chain” commented Emma Loftus, Head of Global Payments for Financial Institutions at Citi.

Citi has also taken client service to the next level with its new, complementary tool to PFM, Citi® Payment Advisor. This allows banks and their counterparties to retrieve transaction details anywhere, anytime through a simple link that’s readily accessible. Payment Advisor is also available through the CitiDirect® platform.

“Instead of contacting the correspondent bank directly or navigating through a complicated online portal to find what they need, beneficiaries can get instant access to payment details through Citi Payment Advisor.” Loftus explains. “This tool was designed to give any party in the payment chain the ability to check the status of a transaction – the bank client, their branches, their customers and beneficiaries. For us, it’s about supplying transparency to all parties in the payment cycle.”

Payment Flow Manager and Citi Payment Advisor together provided unprecedented functionality in the Payments space for Banks. No other tools in the market offer all these features combined for Funds Transfer activity.

Global Transaction Services, a division of Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, offers integrated cash management, trade, and securities and fund services to multinational corporations, financial institutions and public sector organizations around the world. With a network that spans more than 100 countries, Citigroup’s Global Transaction Services supports over 65,000 clients. As of the second quarter of 2011, it held on average $365 billion in liability balances and $13.5 trillion in assets under custody.

About Citi.

Citi, the leading global financial services company, 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.

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