Global Finance named Citi Best Corporate Digital Bank in Asia-Pacific

Earlier this year, Citi was also recognised across a number of sub-categories in Asia Pacific

Citi was also awarded World’s Best Digital Bank for the 20^th consecutive year, and overall Best Corporate Digital Bank.

Earlier this year, in the awards’ first round of results, Citi was named Best Corporate Digital Bank in 13 Asia-Pacific markets, including Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong (China), India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Citi was also recognised across a number of sub-categories in the Asia-Pacific, winning Best Online Investment Management Services, Best Online Treasury Services, Best Online Portal, Best Integrated Corporate Banking Site, Best Mobile Adaptive Site, and Best SME Banking.

“Our wins from Global Finance recognise our commitment to being the financial partner of choice for digital commerce. In response to the pandemic, an evolving operating environment, and the growth of e-commerce, clients in the Asia-Pacific are increasingly adapting and embracing new and digitally-driven business models. Digital companies are also responding to these developments, with a focus on expanding their operations and capacity to meet the increase in demand for online services,” said Rajesh Mehta, Asia-Pacific head, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi. “Supporting our clients and their priorities, we continue to invest in technology to transform the client experience and offer instant, real-time banking services. We remain focused on our innovation efforts and building out capabilities that enable our clients to engage with their customers and broader ecosystems differently.”

Citi’s digital banking platforms and services continue to see increased adoption by clients.

As such, close to 350 million API calls have been processed in the Asia-Pacific since the launch of APIs for corporates in 2017 with steady client adoption.

Instant payments volumes have increased 46 per cent on-year, between January to September 2020 and the same period this year.

CitiDirect BE – Citi’s award-winning online banking platform for institutional and corporate clients – recorded a 13 per cent on-year increase in the number of users in October this year.

With more clients accessing the mobile version of the platform, the CitiDirect BE mobile app user base is up by close to 50 per cent.

Using CitiDirect BE Digital Onboarding, the majority of account opening is now digital, with a 120 per cent increase in the number of accounts opened digitally between November 2019 to September 2020 and November 2020 to September 2021.

In Vietnam, Citi recently introduced the CitiDirect BE Document Centre, a new service digitising supporting documents and streamlining relevant processes required to facilitate cross-border payments for institutional clients.

This latest digital solution complements Citi’s suite of recently launched digital capabilities in Vietnam including CitiDirect BE Digital Onboarding, electronic customs declaration processing and eTax payments.

The winners of the Global Finance Best Digital Bank Awards are evaluated by a world-class panel of industry experts, based on a number of criteria including strength of strategy for attracting and servicing digital customers, success in getting clients to use digital offerings, growth of digital customers, breadth of product offerings, evidence of tangible benefits gained from digital initiatives and web/mobile site design and functionality.