Arteria AI will automate contract lifecycle management for Citi and expand its footprint on the back of an undisclosed investment.

Arteria AI, a Toronto-based fintech that spun off from Deloitte in 2020, provides automated contract lifecycle management (CLM) services for banks, credit unions and financial institutions.

The fintech maintains a client base that consists of dozens of large financial institutions, including $1.6 trillion Goldman Sachs, and this buy-in helped lure $2.3 trillion Citi at a time when the fintech was not actively considering new funding, Abrar Huq, Arteria AI chief revenue officer, told Bank Automation News.

“We were not looking to raise, and we were not in an active cycle,”,” Huq said. “We’ve been born and bred out of firms like Citi, and many of their peers. Those are where we traditionally see our customers. So, it was on-strategy for us to partner in the way that we are with Citi.”

Katya Chupryna, head of Citi’s spread products investment technologies wing, told BAN that Arteria AI’s solution is interoperable with existing Citi infrastructure, and balances “multifaceted flexibility and the diligence necessary for adoption by capital markets.”

Citi initiated the new funding alongside venture capital firm BDC Capital, supplying an undisclosed cash injection that Huq said “extends the runway” without dramatically changing the firm’s trajectory. The fintech will now automate contract processing and negotiations for Citi’s structured credit market, and plans to make its own expansion moves.

“We’re deployed in four continents, and we expect to be deployed in probably a dozen countries by the end of the year,” Huq told BAN. “We’re also investing in smaller FIs, credit unions, community banks, regional banks, and that’s another vertical we’re tackling. Much of the proceeds will go toward continuing to fuel that growth.”

Automation at Arteria AI reaps significant efficiencies for banks, Huq told BAN. Data from one of the fintech’s institutional clients showed a 50% cost and time reduction on a four-month negotiation process, which turned into two months of additional revenue on the bank’s deals, he said. Huq expects this automation push to continue thanks to the recent Citi investment.

“We’re not at a point yet where you can take the human out of the loop. It’s not quite 100% automation, and we can debate whether we will ever get there. But our goal is to get as close to 100% as we can,” Huq added.

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