Citi Global Trade Uses AI to Digitize Compliance in NextGen Project

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,” said
Valeria Sica, Global Head of Trade Services for Citi’s Treasury and
Trade Solutions. “This 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.”

Citi’s 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 EY’s deep business, risk, and technology consulting experience
in the financial services sector with SAS’ 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.

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

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 Citi’s escalation
  process for them.

“Banks face almost overwhelming scale and complexity in the
trade-finance sector and in compliance activities,” said Stu Bradley,
Vice President of Fraud and Security Intelligence at SAS. “SAS’
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.”

Citi’s 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 KNOW^®.

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