Citi Global Trade Uses AI to Digitize Compliance in NextGen Project

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April 29, 2019 9:00 AM EDT

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EY and SAS Collaborated to Improve Risk and Compliance Processes

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Citi announced today its NextGen project, an initiative with EY and SAS, using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop an advanced risk analytics scoring engine. NextGen was created to help streamline the time-consuming, highly manual processes associated with reviewing high volumes of global trade transactions while ensuring regulatory compliance.

"By leveraging innovation, we continue our strategic journey to drive digitization throughout our worldwide operations," said John Ahearn, Global Head of Trade for Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions. "We process 9 million transactions annually, and the NextGen project will help us optimize our processes from the back office to the front, by expanding the use of digitization, automation and advanced analytics.”

“This real-time solution will help us to be able to more efficiently detect transactions with potential compliance concerns up front,â said Valeria Sica, Global Head of Trade Services for Citiâs Treasury and Trade Solutions. âThis solution assists in managing and comparing a large number of data points across current and prior transactions, which will provide more context and usable data to aid the decision maker in reviewing global trade transactions, which has traditionally been a very manual process across the industry.â

Citiâs Global Trade business continues to digitize its platforms and processes to optimize the latest innovation available. As a part of this strategy, Citi digitizes over 25MM trade-related pages annually with optical character recognition (OCR). NextGen will continue this legacy by utilizing Artificial Intelligence technology to automate manual processes.

Combining EYâs deep business, risk, and technology consulting experience in the financial services sector with SASâ leading advanced analytics platform, Citi will use the new service to further digitize its trade compliance process. This project will help to eliminate time-intensive, manual processes and provide a streamlined view of risk activity and insights.

âTrade compliance is a key focus for global regulators, and this drives increasing expectations about the scope and sophistication of a bankâs controls,â said Jake Jacobson, EY US Managed Services CIO. âMany banks still rely on manual, paper-based processes, driving up operational costs and impacting the customer experience. Innovative technology helps change the game entirely.â

The new NextGen platform (powered by SAS) is intended to provide:

In-depth analysis of global trade transactions to help align bank resources. The program is scalable to handle the high volume of daily transactions.
Advanced analytics and natural language processing to better understand networks of related parties, unstructured data and customer activity over time.
Process automation that combines analytic results and trade related bank policies to help focus on trade transactions activities that may need further investigation in accordance with Citiâs escalation process for them.

âBanks face almost overwhelming scale and complexity in the trade-finance sector and in compliance activities,â said Stu Bradley, Vice President of Fraud and Security Intelligence at SAS. âSASâ sophisticated analytics platform will help Citi drive more effective and efficient monitoring of trade transactions. The resulting performance and enhanced risk insights should lead to a better risk posture, improved response times for monitoring, and reduced operational costs.â

Citiâs Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) division enables its 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.

About 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. Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://blog.citigroup.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi

About EY

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. Information about how EY collects and uses personal data and a description of the rights individuals have under data protection legislation is available via ey.com/privacy. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOWÂ®.