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Citi Launches Citi® Payment Insights For Institutional Clients with Real-Time Payments Visibility and Management

Royal Dutch Shell Pilot Successfully Completed
Citi has launched Citi®Payment Insights, a new service providing institutional clients with real-time-payments visibility, and ability to action payments on-demand via its electronic banking platform, CitiDirect BE®.
Citi® Payment Insights empowers clients with a complete view of the transaction lifecycle within Citi’s entire global network, and across the correspondent banking eco-system by integrating the transparency provided by SWIFT’s gpi initiative. This enhanced visibility is being launched in 50 markets and includes processing status, processing timelines, charges deducted across correspondent banks, and the amount credited to the beneficiary.
“This new service highlights our dedication to provide a frictionless experience to our clients in a rapidly changing business environment”, said Naveed Sultan, Citi’s Global Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions.“We are constantly searching for innovative solutions to help our clients succeed in the digital economy.”
The Institutional payments industry has traditionally suffered from a lack of full traceability as payments are routed through the global financial system. The servicing of payment inquiries occasionally relies on lengthy, manual and paper based investigation processes between banks. Leveraging banking industry advancements like SWIFT gpi and the latest technologies such as APIs, cloud computing, and Big Data, Citi has taken a transformative approach to digitize its client’s payments experience with innovative omni-channel solutions, including APIs, to meet clients’ needs.
While developing Citi® Payment Insights, Citi worked with Royal Dutch Shell to deliver a seamless digital experience to control payments globally. Processes that in the past could have taken several days can now be completed in as few as two to three clicks. “Digitalization is an integral part of our Cash Management 2020 strategy. We are excited to see our requirements translate into tangible platform features that benefit both Shell and Citi. We have received positive feedback from the users who participated in the pilot that they found the service to be very intuitive. We look forward to introducing these features to our cash management team globally and reaching 75%+ elimination of targeted inquires over time”, said Darsh Johal, Head of Global Cash Management, Royal Dutch Shell.
Citi® Payment Insights has been designed based on client feedback, and the current features include:
- Payments Tracking – provides instant access to payment status including rejects and returns; making the tracking of a payment as easy as tracking a postal package
- Incoming Payments – offers a view of incoming payments before a credit is posted into clients’ accounts for improved working capital management
- On-Demand Proof of Payment– SWIFT messages and branch signatures that can be saved, printed, or sent via email
- Grant/Deny Debit Authority – allows clients to provide debit authority online, when remitter recall funds posted to a client’s account
- Return of Funds – enables beneficiary to return credits not recognized
“Clients are at the center of our strategy to continually improve security, transparency, speed, convenience and efficiency in the global payments industry.” said Manish Kohli, Global Head of Payments and Receivables, Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions. “Citi® Payment Insights is a significant step forward in executing on this strategy. This service will deliver tangible value to all our client segments and the new technology platform sets the foundation for future innovations. I want to commend the Shell team for their digital leadership and thank them for their active engagement throughout the design of Citi® Payment Insights” he added.
Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) enables our 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.
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Australia says no further Facebook, Google amendments as final vote nears

By Colin Packham
CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia will not alter legislation that would make Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google pay news outlets for content, a senior lawmaker said on Monday, as Canberra neared a final vote on whether to pass the bill into law.
Australia and the tech giants have been in a stand-off over the legislation widely seen as setting a global precedent.
Other countries including Canada and Britain have already expressed interest in taking some sort of similar action.
Facebook has protested the laws. Last week it blocked all news content and several state government and emergency department accounts, in a jolt to the global news industry, which has already seen its business model upended by the titans of the technological revolution.
Talks between Australia and Facebook over the weekend yielded no breakthrough.
As Australia’s senate began debating the legislation, the country’s most senior lawmaker in the upper house said there would be no further amendments.
“The bill as it stands … meets the right balance,” Simon Birmingham, Australia’s Minister for Finance, told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio.
The bill in its present form ensures “Australian-generated news content by Australian-generated news organisations can and should be paid for and done so in a fair and legitimate way”.
The laws would give the government the right to appoint an arbitrator to set content licencing fees if private negotiations fail.
While both Google and Facebook have campaigned against the laws, Google last week inked deals with top Australian outlets, including a global deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
“There’s no reason Facebook can’t do and achieve what Google already has,” Birmingham added.
A Facebook representative declined to comment on Monday on the legislation, which passed the lower house last week and has majority support in the Senate.
A final vote after the so-called third reading of the bill is expected on Tuesday.
Lobby group DIGI, which represents Facebook, Google and other online platforms like Twitter Inc, meanwhile said on Monday that its members had agreed to adopt an industry-wide code of practice to reduce the spread of misinformation online.
Under the voluntary code, they commit to identifying and stopping unidentified accounts, or “bots”, disseminating content; informing users of the origins of content; and publishing an annual transparency report, among other measures.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye and Colin Packham; Editing by Sam Holmes and Hugh Lawson)
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GSK and Sanofi start with new COVID-19 vaccine study after setback

By Pushkala Aripaka and Matthias Blamont
(Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi on Monday said they had started a new clinical trial of their protein-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, reviving their efforts against the pandemic after a setback in December delayed the shot’s launch.
The British and French drugmakers aim to reach final testing in the second quarter, and if the results are conclusive, hope to see the vaccine approved by the fourth quarter after having initially targeted the first half of this year.
In December, the two groups stunned investors when they said their vaccine would be delayed towards the end of 2021 after clinical trials showed an insufficient immune response in older people.
Disappointing results were probably caused by an inadequate concentration of the antigen used in the vaccine, Sanofi and GSK said, adding that Sanofi has also started work against new coronavirus variants to help plan their next steps.
Global coronavirus infections have exceeded 110 million as highly transmissible variants of the virus are prompting vaccine developers and governments to tweak their testing and immunisation strategies.
GSK and Sanofi’s vaccine candidate uses the same recombinant protein-based technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza vaccines. It will be coupled with an adjuvant, a substance that acts as a booster to the shot, made by GSK.
“Over the past few weeks, our teams have worked to refine the antigen formulation of our recombinant-protein vaccine,” Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president and head of Sanofi Pasteur, said in a statement.
The new mid-stage trial will evaluate the safety, tolerability and immune response of the vaccine in 720 healthy adults across the United States, Honduras and Panama and test two injections given 21 days apart.
Sanofi and GSK have secured deals to supply their vaccine to the European Union, Britain, Canada and the United States. It also plans to provide shots to the World Health Organization’s COVAX programme.
To appease critics after the delay, Sanofi said earlier this year it had agreed to fill and pack millions of doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from July.
Sanofi is also working with Translate Bio on another COVID-19 vaccine candidate based on mRNA technology.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Matthias Blamont in Paris; editing by Jason Neely and Barbara Lewis)
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Don’t ignore “lockdown fatigue”, UK watchdog tells finance bosses

By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – Staff at financial firms in Britain are suffering from “lockdown fatigue” and their bosses are not always making sure all employees can speak up freely about their problems, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Monday.
Many staff at financial companies have been working from home since Britain went into its first lockdown in March last year to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
One year on, the challenges have evolved from adapting to working remotely to dealing with mental health issues, said David Blunt, the FCA’s head of conduct specialists.
“During this third lockdown, there has been a greater impact on mental well-being, with many people struggling with job security, caring responsibilities, home schooling, bereavements and lockdown fatigue.”
Bosses should continually revisit how they lead remote teams, he said.
“The impact of COVID-19 is creating a huge workload for those considered to be high performers, while the remote environment potentially makes it much more challenging for those who were previously considered low performers to change that perception,” Blunt told a City & Financial online event.
Companies should consider “psychological safety” or ensuring that all employees feel confident about speaking out and challenging opinions.
“We’ve heard varying reports of how successful this has been,” Blunt said.
Pressures in the financial sector were highlighted this month when accountants KPMG said its UK chairman Bill Michael had stepped aside during a probe into comments he made to staff.
The Financial Times said Michael, who later apologised for his comments, had told staff to “stop moaning” about the impact of the pandemic on their work lives.
Blunt was speaking as the FCA next month completes the full rollout of rules that force senior managers at financial firms to be personally accountable for their decisions to improve conduct standards.
There have only been a “modest” number of breaches reported to regulators so far as firms worry about being “tainted” but more cases will become public as sanctions are revealed, Blunt said.
“Regulators won’t be impressed by lowballing the figures.”
(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Mark Heinrich)