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  • Citi and Lazada Unveil Co-Branded Credit Card

    Citi and Lazada Unveil Co-Branded Credit Card

    Citi and e-commerce platform Lazada Group announced the launch of the Citi Lazada credit card in Singapore on Monday. The new co-brand credit card allows millennial shoppers to enjoy the launch promotions and card benefits as they shop online during the year-end festive season.

    Tapping into the growing purchasing power of millennial consumers in Singapore, Citi and Lazada aim to serve over 50 percent of young professionals locally with the new card over the next few years. Data from Citi, the world’s largest credit card issuer, shows that more than half of its new credit card customers in Singapore are digitally acquired and that these customers are more engaged with close to three times more spending than others within three months of onboarding.

    With over 30 per cent of our customers’ credit card spend now made via digital channels, it is important for us to continue expanding our presence and scale in digital ecosystems, and deepening our engagement with the growing eCommerce customer base in Singapore, said Brendan Carney, CEO of Citibank Singapore Limited and Global Consumer Banking ASEAN Cluster Head in a media statement.

    The Citi Lazada credit card launch is a natural extension to Citi and Lazada’s regional partnership, which began in Singapore in 2015. With the new card, Citi gains access to a younger, digitally-savvy customer pool that makes up the majority of eCommerce customers in the region, while Lazada widens its breadth of offers and services by leveraging a global financial platform. Together, the partners target over 500,000 new credit cards in Southeast Asia over the next few years.

    Over the first 11 months of the year, Lazada saw a 43 percent year-on-year increase in the number of customers aged 18-35 shopping on our platform in Singapore. Millennials are now buying more groceries, household supplies, and beauty products online than ever before. As eCommerce in Southeast Asia continues to flourish and meet consumers’ expanding needs, Citi and Lazada are unified by a common goal to develop the eCommerce ecosystem and provide more value to digital natives, said James Chang, CEO of Lazada Singapore.

  • Citigroup President Getting a $12.5 million bonus

    Citigroup President Getting a $12.5 million bonus

    Jane Fraser is landing a $12.5 million bonus as the bank looks to retain a likely successor to Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat.

    The board’s compensation committee granted the award «in recognition of Fraser’s recent promotion to president and to enhance leadership continuity and management succession planning,» according to the firm’s regulatory filing on Wednesday. Half of the award is in cash and half is in stock, and both will vest in annual installments over four years.

    Fraser, who was promoted to the number 2 job at Citigroup last month, puts her in position to become the first woman to lead a major U.S. bank as the industry is under pressure to improve diversity. In April, a congressional hearing questioned the heads of the largest U.S. banks on why their companies never put a woman in charge.

    Several banking chiefs, including Corbat, responded that they could envision one succeeding them. In Asia, Theresa Foo became the first Asian female chief executive at Standard Chartered, according to the website Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1997, she was the first woman in the Bank of America’s Singapore operations to be made a vice president.

     

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  • Citi Scores Two Investment Bankers in Asia From Rival

    Citi Scores Two Investment Bankers in Asia From Rival

    Citigroup hired two investment bankers from HSBC Holdings in Asia as part of its efforts to strengthen its Chinese real estate advisory business. Kara Wang has joined Citigroup as managing director and co-head of real estate investment banking for Asia, according to an internal memo. The move was confirmed by James Griffiths, Citigroup’s Hong Kong-based spokesman. Dayday Zhou, a director of Wang’s team at HSBC, will join the bank in January, the spokesman added. The latest Citigroup hires will raise the number of Asia corporate and investment banking hires to six since December.
    The U.S. bank is hoping to bolster income in the region, its biggest market outside of North America. In the third quarter, Citigroup’s revenue in Asia grew 6% to $4.02 billion from a year earlier. Meanwhile, HSBC is undergoing huge changes as acting chief executive Noel Quinn undertakes cost-cutting and business transformation Citigroup ranks ninth advising share sales by real estate companies in Greater China, down from fifth in the same period last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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  • Google Explores Bank Accounts With Citi, Stanford Federal

    Google Explores Bank Accounts With Citi, Stanford Federal

    Google is in talks with U.S. banks about offering checking accounts to its customers. The jointly-developed accounts could mirror the forms deployed in Asia.

    Google has said it is working with initial partners – Citigroup and Stanford Federal Credit Union – on checking accounts for customers. The particular features and functions of the Google Pay-linked checking accounts are still being deliberated, but one working model could be Citi’s existing partnership with the messaging service WeChat in Asia, where Citibank customers make payments and complete other everyday banking transactions through the WeChat platform.

    We’re exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the U.S. to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools, said a Google spokesperson. Similar to rival Apple Pay, Google Pay allows smartphones to be used for purchases online and in stores.

    Privacy and transparency are, and will continue to be critical priorities,” said Citigroup in a statement. A bank spokesperson quoted by FT said that it would control the banking relationships and that the accounts would comply with the same regulations as a traditional account.

    Although mobile and online payments such as WeChat Pay and Alipay are already widely used in China, Silicon Valley companies are just starting to move into the highly regulated world of financial services in the U.S. Earlier this year, Apple and Goldman Sachs teamed up to launch a credit card, offering cash back on purchases of Apple devices and an iPhone app to track
    spending.

    Google’s new banking effort, code-named Cache, is the technology giant’s latest foray into the personal finance industry. Google Pay, which already has tens of millions of users around the world, is already popular in India.

    On Monday, the technology firm announced plans to launch Google Pay in Singapore next year, partnering local banks DBS and OCBC. Our approach is going to be to partner deeply with banks and the financial system,” said Caesar Sengupta, Google’s general manager of payments.

  • Citi Drops China Website On IPO Fee Disput

    Citi Drops China Website On IPO Fee Disput

    Citigroup had initially been listed in the IPO document of Fangdd Network Group in the second position after Morgan Stanley, but did not appear on the press statement last Friday on the Nasdaq Global Market.

    Citi had been hired as the second bookrunner on the Chinese group’s IPO, but as both sides could not reach an agreement on the underwriting fees, the IPO arranger dropped out, citing people familiar with the matter.

    Morgan Stanley, UBS, China International Capital Corp, and AMTD Global Markets Limited were listed as joint book-runners for Fangdd’s IPO.

    Fangd had cut the number of shares it sold in its IPO from seven million to six million ase= demand for its stock during its roadshow was soft.

    DouYu International Holdings, which raised $775 million in July, is the biggest US IPO of a Chinese company this year while four deals from last year topped $1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    U.S. offerings typically pay a higher percentage in IPO fees compared to most Asian countries. However, U.S. IPOs of Chinese companies have shrunk in size this year as investors grew wary about the tensions between U.S. and China, reducing fees for Asian investment bankers.

    Chinese companies raised $2.9 billion in the US this year, down from the $7.9 billion raised during the same time last year.

  • Citi to Drop Two-Thirds of FX Platforms

    Citi to Drop Two-Thirds of FX Platforms

    Citi will drop links to two-thirds of the existing foreign exchange platforms it is using, in a move to consolidate technology and reduce costs.

    Citi will reduce the number of FX platforms it uses from 45 to 15 by the first quarter of 2020, citing anonymous sources. The report added that the move to cut links could save the bank $5-10 million per year.

    Lower FX volatility over the past decade has led banks to invest heavily in electronic trading systems to reduce costs and maximize margins. But a moderated outlook for the FX trading business is likely to drive providers to rethink their offerings.

    Alongside J.P. Morgan, Citigroup is one of the two largest FX traders by market share, according to a 2018 Greenwich Associates report, highlighting advantages in its technology and client networks.

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  • Citi Appoints APAC CEO

    Citi Appoints APAC CEO

    Citi names its new Asia Pacific CEO six months after the departure of the former regional chief.

    Peter Babej has been named as chief executive officer of Asia Pacific, succeeding Francisco Aristeguieta who left in April and was replaced in the interim by Tim Monger who will return to solely focus on his CFO role.

    Babej joined Citi in 2010 as its co-head of the financial institutions group within its institutional client group before becoming the unit’s sole head in 2017. Previously, Babej held multiple senior roles at Deutsche Bank and Lazard.

    According to the bank, Babej’s deep financial knowledge and dealmaking experience, especially with regards to digital adoption, will serve Citi well given rapid growth in the market.

    Under Peter’s leadership, the Citi has participated in some of the most significant transactions in the sector, including several Asia-driven mergers and acquisitions, said Citigroup CEO Mike Corbat, highlighting marque deals such as the $14 billion fundraisings for Ant Financial.

    In the first nine months of 2019, Citi’s APAC unit posted a net income of $3.91b, accounting for 27 percent of the global sum.

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  • Citi Setting Up Wholly Owned Securities Unit in China

    Citi Setting Up Wholly Owned Securities Unit in China

    Citigroup, which earlier announced its decision to dissolve its investment-banking joint venture in China, is now setting up a wholly-owned securities business in the world’s second-largest economy.

    The New York-based bank may initially focus on brokerage and futures trading while expanding its custodian services in China, quoting sources familiar with the matter. This comes as China announced the removal of ownership caps for financial institutions.

    The people asked not to be identified because a final decision has yet to be made. It also plans to apply for a futures license as early as the first half of 2020.

    Earlier this year, Citigroup has agreed to sell its stake in its Citi Orient Securities joint venture to its Chinese partner, as it prepares to set up its own brokerage in the world’s second-largest capital market.

    In December, Citigroup Global Markets Asia informed Orient Securities that the bank intended to sell all of its shareholdings, the Chinese company said in an exchange filing. Orient said its board gave the green light for the acquisition of Citi’s stake, adding that the deal will be subject to approval from China’s securities regulator and state asset regulator.

  • Citi partners with Lazada to launch co-branded credit card

    Citi partners with Lazada to launch co-branded credit card

    The financial services company Citi has partnered with Lazada Group to launch the Lazada Citi credit card in Southeast Asia.

    Offering 10 times more rewards on Lazada purchases and Lazada Wallet top-ups, Citi and Lazada aim to reach more than 500,000 signups of the new card across the region during the next few years.

    “As a leading consumer lifestyle destination, we want to bring more value to our customers and a co-branded card that rewards users on their purchases,” said Mary Zhou, chief marketing officer at Lazada Group. “With the theme ‘Play-it-up’, this card brings lifestyle benefits to our valued customers advocating entertainment on top of our everyday promotions.”

    Asia Pacific cards and loans region head at Citi, Sergio Zanatti, said that through the partnership, Citi is looking to increase its consumer-banking customer base in Asia Pacific by about 2 million during the next few years.

    He said that with the new collaboration, Citi will be able to reach more potential customers who are millennials as they account for the vast majority of e-commerce customers while Lazada can now offer its customers new payment method to enhance their shopping experience through a global financial platform.

    The new credit card is already available in Malaysia and will be introduced in Lazada’s other regional markets during the next six months.

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  • Citi To Cut Hundreds Of Trading Jobs

    Citi To Cut Hundreds Of Trading Jobs

    Global banks continue to feel the pinch from slowed trading with Citi joining its peers to lighten their trading operations with hundreds of related jobs expected to be axed in 2019.

    The American lender is expected to slash jobs according to multiple media reports. A Bloomberg report noted that the job cuts will occur over the course of the year and will be focused on its fixed income and equity trading business, including 100 jobs in the latter—nearly 10 percent of the whole division.

    Excluding a one-off sales of a stake in a trading venture, combined revenue from fixed income and equity trading fell 5 percent at Citigroup in the second quarter.

    A drop in trading revenue has affected the banking sector as a whole, especially American banks which have a heavy reliance on the business. The five largest American Wall Street banks reported an 8% decrease in trading revenues in the second quarter after a 14 percent decrease in Q1.

    In addition to weaker sentiments and market uncertainty, numerous longer-term structural drivers have been in play to pressure bank’s trading businesses. Hedge funds, traditionally the major revenue source for bank trading, has failed to recover from its heydays and faces outflows due to competitive low-cost funds. Online trading has not only taken significant market share from banks but continues to pressure margins.

    Citi joins Deutsche Bank as the latest heavyweight to headline job cuts in trading. Earlier this month, the German lender announced plans to exit equity trading and cut 18,000 jobs globally.

  • Citi Asia Execution Services Head Joins From JPMAM

    Citi Asia Execution Services Head Joins From JPMAM

    Citi hires J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s former Americas head of trading to run its Asia Pacific execution business. Curt Engler has been named as Citi’s Asia Pacific (APAC) Head of Execution Services. A key focus under his leadership will be to ensure Citi’s franchise continues to embrace the latest technology to meet the changing needs of clients.

    Curt’s market knowledge of operating in the world’s largest equity market and the market infrastructure changes he has worked through will be invaluable for Citi and our clients as Asian markets continue to evolve rapidly, said Richard Heyes, Head of Equities, Asia Pacific, in a media statement on Thursday.

    Curt, who has worked in financial markets for over 20 years – joins from J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPAM) in New York, where he was Head of Trading for the Americas. Prior to JP Morgan Asset Management Curt was a trader and analyst at Blackrock, in the Quantitative Equity Group.

    At J.P. Morgan Asset Management since 2010, Curt was responsible for the daily activity of the trading desk and oversaw the trading operations of over $250 billion in assets under management. He also led the build-out of trading technology to support significantly increased levels of automation and the usage of analytics to improve execution performance.

    Based in Hong Kong, Curt will be responsible for Citi’s regional execution business. where he will be responsible for Citi’s cash execution business that spans 12 markets across the region.

    «Asia-Pacific is a key market for our global equities business and I am confident this addition to the strong bench will support further growth with clients across the region,» said Dan Keegan, Global co-head of Equities.

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  • Citi’s Retail Business Grows Despite Branch Cuts

    Citi’s Retail Business Grows Despite Branch Cuts

    Citi has closed hundreds of branches in Asia in recent years, shrinking its network from 600 to roughly 250, according to «Reuters.» Despite downsizing its physical network, Citi is benefitting from the increasing shift towards digital banking among retail banking customers.

    This (digital banking) has kind of evened the playing field for us because today, customers are online. We are no longer relying on having the number of branches to reach out to them, especially in a market like Singapore, said Charles Wong, Citibank Singapore’s head of retail banking.

    Last October, Citi rolled out a virtual remote engagement feature for Singapore clients to speak with relationship managers on demand using screen sharing and video capabilities. The following month, it revamped its Citi Mobile app to offer a cleaner user interface and new features such as a multi-currency wallet.

    The bank is also targeting to enable customers to open accounts with the bank digitally in the third quarter of this year. The aim is to enable all branch transactions to be carried out on the mobile app within the next two to three years.

    Citi’s bets to serve retail banking clients via its mobile app and online services in Singapore appear to be paying off – its first-quarter revenue this year was up about 10 percent from a year ago, even as its physical branches have been cut back from 18 to 15 last year.

    Digital acquisitions of retail banking customers grew 20 percent in Q1 from the year-ago quarter, said Wong. «In terms of how we generate interest and leads in the digital world through digital partners, versus generating leads through the traditional marketing channels, that has come up significantly as well,» he added.

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  • Citibank Singapore to Instantly Approve Debt Consolidation Plan

    Citibank Singapore to Instantly Approve Debt Consolidation Plan

    Citibank Singapore announced that it is the first bank in Singapore to introduce instant in-principle approval for debt consolidation plans. Customers applying online for Citibank Singapore’s debt consolidation plan will receive an immediate indication of their application status, as the bank is the first in Singapore to offer eligible customers instant in-principle approval.

    «The ability to grant instant in-principle approval resolves a key customer pain point by giving customers a better sense of their application’s eventual outcome, even before they go through the effort of gathering their financial documents and sending them to the bank,» said Vikas Kumar, Head of Cards and Personal Loans at Citibank Singapore, in a media statement.

    This new capability, which will be launched on Tuesday, enhances convenience for prospective customers who previously had to wait for up to three days for a decision after the bank receives their applications through email or post.

    Upon receiving a debt consolidation application, the bank will access the customer’s credit report through its API integration with Credit Bureau Singapore. The customer’s credit situation is assessed through a fully automated process, enabling the bank to grant instant in-principle approval for eligible individuals.

    Customers can then submit their supporting documents – which are required by industry regulations – consisting of their various credit statements from different financial institutions, income records, and proofs of identification. The bank will also proactively reach out to customers should they need assistance after receiving their in-principle approval.

    Debt consolidation plans were introduced by Singapore’s financial institutions in January 2017 to help borrowers reduce their debt over time. Debt consolidation plans consolidate a borrower’s existing unsecured credit balances across various institutions under a single entity and offer effective interest rates that are lower than card and credit line rates.

    Customers on debt consolidation plans will have lower monthly repayments as compared to the total individual payments a customer incurs, and the benefit of making repayments to a single bank. Customers of Citibank Singapore can choose a loan tenure of up to seven years and will receive a credit card with a limit of one month’s income.

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  • Legacy Banks Must Become Agile, Says Citi

    Legacy Banks Must Become Agile, Says Citi

    New entrants and increased competition brought about by challenger banks could result in revenue losses of up to 30 percent among legacy banks over the next 10 years. While digitalization can lower costs for incumbent banks by 30 to 50 percent, new competition and greater transparency in the banking market, prompted by the emergence of challenger banks driven by fintech startups, are likely to lower revenues by 10 to 30 percent in the next decade, according to the report “Bank X: The New New Banks” published by Citi on Thursday.

    As legacy banks recognize the threat that new entrants into banking are posing to revenue and customers, they need to reinvent themselves and reimagine banking. This involves legacy banks partnering with technology companies to create effective joint ventures as well as moving into more disruptive technology and business models to transform themselves into digital competitors, the report said.

    If banks successfully transform digitally, their ROEs will rise from 8 percent in Europe and 16 percent in the U.S. to 15 percent and 24 percent respectively in a bullish scenario, and 5 percent and 10 percent respectively in a bearish scenario, the report noted.

    Bank X

    Built by new entrants, challenger banks designed around new digital technologies, leveraging data insights via agile technology stacks to offer customers better personalization and fully digital banking experiences. As they offer their services remotely via online or mobile banking, challenger banks tend to be quicker at incorporating new products or processes into their platforms and help easily connect with third-party products, ultimately offering more choices to the end-user.

    By creating their own Bank X, we believe legacy banks can transform themselves from slow-moving caterpillars to agile butterflies, Ronit Ghose, Citi Global Head of Bank Research, said.

    The report noted that while creating a new digital-only bank can help incumbent banks meet an evolving set of customer expectations quickly and effectively, setting up an independent challenger bank needs to be differentiated from digital transformations and core banking overhauls that they undertake. This is because creating their own Bank X requires independent application programming interfaces (APIs) and technology stacks, which is a significant departure from the operating model of incumbent banks.

    Need for Regulation in Asia

    Apart from the lower number of challenger banks in Asia compared to the U.K. and U.S., Citi noted that challenger banks in Asia are largely offshoots of big tech, telcoms, and banks. For example, WeBank, MYbank, and Kakao Bank are all backed by tech firms, KBank and Jibun Bank are backed by telcoms, while DBS has made progress in Indonesia and India with digibank, its own challenger bank.

    While Asia has several challenger banks originating from startups aiming to disrupt the financial system, Neat in Hong Kong or Paytm in India, they are exceptions. This is a result of the limited regulatory framework for challengers in Asia, with the emerging exception of Hong Kong, and the presence of large tech companies, particularly in China.

    Conversely, challenger bank activity is vibrant in the U.K. and Europe as a result of progressive regulations enacted to promote competition and break up the banking monopoly, the report said.

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  • Citi Hires UBS Banker For Taiwan

    Citi Hires UBS Banker For Taiwan

    Citi Private Bank appointed Sally Yeh as global market manager for Taiwan, who joins immediately. She joins the American bank from UBS, where she most recently led a team of offshore bankers working with entrepreneurs from Taiwan.

    She will be responsible for growing Citi’s with ultra-high net worth individuals from Taiwan and manages teams based in both Hong Kong and Singapore. Yeh, who is based in Hong Kong, reports to Rudolf Hitsch, Citi’s head of north Asia.

    Veteran Banker

    Yeh brings with her over 20 years of experience in various financial fields focused on the needs of business owners and investors from Taiwan.

    She started her career in Taiwan in asset management, before moving on to work in investment banking for eight years. In 2009, she joined UBS as a private banker  in Hong Kong for the ultra-high net worth segment.

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