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This is what is driving Citi

At Citi's Treasury and Trade Solutions impressive press roundtable last week, which we reported on 4 November, the team also showed what is driving Citi.

Mission and objectives

Mission: 

Deliver the leading finance platform for global commerce to service our clients’ operating and working capital needs

Objectives:

Source & Copyright©2020 - Citibank

ESG / Sustainability is now intrinsically linked with financial performance

Most banks and corporations are now making sustainability a key driver (but most started too late to meet the Paris Accord targets). Still, Citi really “get” how important it is to understand who “is part of the solution”. In the press conference they quoted from their “Sustainable Tipping Points” paper by Citi GPS in August 2020 which stated that “Given the likely increasing significance and proliferation of net-zero targets, understanding who is part of the solution, and who might be seen as ‘problematic’ in a supply chain is clearly of paramount importance for corporates, as well as investors.” 

Citi has developed a sustainability SCF model with which they intend to motivate suppliers to improve their business model, as the figure below shows:

Source & Copyright©2020 – Citibank

Empowering the unbanked in Sub-Saharan Africa

Another part of this press roundtable was on how Citi have set themselves the laudable objective of empowering the unbanked in Sub-Saharan Africa by encouraging B2C and B2B mobile payments collections. They plan to do this by driving opportunities to work with fintechs, encouraging market integration, and improving clients experience, as summary below shows:

Source & Copyright©2020 – Citibank


CTMfile take: It is noticeable how over the last two years the major banks have got their act together and now have a much clearer view as to what their role is in society and what part they can play. Citi’s transformation of their strategy, objectives and delivery is impressive, and, as Ben Poole wrote last week, “A backbone of digitisation has laid a platform not just for business resilience, but also for future growth and efficiency.”

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