Citibank Expands Digital Banking Onboarding to 37 Countries

Need to Know

• Citibank has announced it will expand its CitiDirect BE Digital Onboarding to 37 countries.
• The use of Citibank’s client-facing digital channels has grown dramatically due to COVID-19.
• The expanded online onboarding platform is also now available in five languages.
• Bank plans to expand CitiDirect BE Digital Onboarding platform to 50 countries by the end of 2020.

Analysis

As business continues to be conducted remotely and from home, Citibank has expanded its digital onboarding platform, CitiDirect BE Digital Onboarding, to 37 countries, in order to accommodate the increased demand for online-only banking service.

Using Citibank’s online tools, clients are able to replace processes that would traditionally involve paper documentation, specifically signing documents, that would otherwise involve in-person transactions or couriers. Citibank is able to complete the account-opening process using an entirely digital, streamlined process, made possible in part by the reduction by 97% of overall terms and conditions in its documentation. CitiBank began implementing the process in 2018.

“During these unusually challenging times, where clients are primarily working remotely and their ability to provide physical, signed documents is severely restricted, the simplicity of Citi’s accelerated digital account-opening process is especially valuable,” Naveed Sultan, global head of Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions, said in a statement.

Many Citibank customers have pivoted to continuity-of-business (COB) modes during the pandemic, utilizing the bank’s digital-only functions to reassess payment modes and digitize numerous previously-manual processes. Citibank’s Know Your Customer program — which enables customer identification and verification — in addition to the bank’s capacity to migrate existing account data to new accounts and digital product requirement forms allow customers to open new accounts within 24 hours.

Citibank has been bolstering its digital capacities for some time. In January of this year, Citi announced plans to add 2,500 coders and data scientists to its team, a move that the bank anticipated would save it $600-million by the end of 2020.