The Citibank Online Investments (OLI) portal has been upgraded with new features for self-service, fund analytics and access to floating net asset values (NAVs).
It is intended to deliver increased liquidity management options for treasury clients and help address new regulatory reforms, such as the Basel III capital adequacy regime and changes to how Money Market Funds (MMFs) must operate.
The new tools provide treasury managers with increased visibility, faster turnaround times and increased automation. The additions comprise:
- A new Money Fund Analytics (MFA) tool: This is a robust interactive tool providing real-time visibility into consolidated exposures across a MMF portfolio. With MFA, clients can more effectively manage counterparty exposures, claims Citi, while identifying potential risks and making more informed investment decisions. The tool allows users to create hypothetical ‘what if’ scenarios to assess how potential trading activity might impact exposures. For example, clients can use the tool to evaluate the maturity ladder of a fund or entire portfolio to help set an investment strategy for maximum earnings.
- Floating NAV-compliant MMF regulatory tool: The Citi Online Investments (OLI) money market funds product is subject to the reforms mandated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which require institutional MMFs to move from a stable $1.00 price per share to a floating net asset value (NAV). The product has been enhanced to accommodate the reform mandates including changes to trade workflows, confirmation statements and reports, plus expanded research tools. Clients now have a consolidated, easy-to-use source from which to compare intraday strike times across multiple funds, claims Citi. In addition, to help clients research their fund options a new historical NAV report function has been created. Clients can compare across funds, or track a single fund, if they want to see how much and how frequently their NAV changes.
- Self-Service Capabilities: These have been added to enhance the client experience of OLI. Citi says it now offers more self-service options, empowering clients and expanding its online investments capabilities to support faster turnaround times, eliminate paper-based processes and increase automation. This should make it easier to do business with Citi. Minimum Maturity Time Deposits, now available in tenors of 31 to 370 days, for example, offer real-time reporting, available any time a client logs into the portal. Similarly, alert features have been enhanced so that clients can now customize them to receive automatic email notifications for trade and account events. This provides simplified alert creation and maintenance enhancements, improved recipient selection options, and streamlined notifications. User profile maintenance options provide self-service tools too, which eliminates old paper-based request processes for faster client turnaround times, potentially saving up to two days, claims the bank.
The OLI portal processes over $50bn in client transactions each month and allows Citi clients to centralize and control their short-term investment activity. It can be accessed through Citi’s global CitiDirect BE and CitiDirect for Securities portals.
OLI is available in over 30 countries and 18 currencies. It includes 80 MMFs globally from ten of the largest institutional fund providers, with the flexibility for automated sweeps or actively traded investments.
“As the market landscape continues to evolve with increased regulation, reform and uncertainty regarding interest rates, clients need more choices and tools to manage their liquidity,” said Mark Smith, head of treasury and trade solutions liquidity management services at Citi. “These new features illustrate Citi’s continued investment and commitment to adapting to and leading necessary market change.”
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