Financial institutions are looking to new technology, growing their innovation teams and investing in AI and generative AI.  

Citigroup goes beyond the technology when starting innovation projects, looking to its clients and existing capabilities.  

When the $1.6 trillion Citi is evaluating new tech and innovation, “it’s not just about the innovative idea, it’s about how it fits in the entire chain,” Biswarup Chatterjee, global head of partnerships and innovation at Citi, said at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 in Nashville, Tenn., last month.  

When taking on a new project, Chatterjee said, the innovation team considers: 

1. Business viability: Citi tends to pay attention to what business problem the technology is solving and if it can be implemented across other areas of operations.

For example, in September 2023, Citi launched its token service solution, which uses blockchain technology to provide liquidity solutions to its clients across different jurisdictions.

“We started thinking about how the technology can be used in more than one use case as it matures and maybe use it in cross-border payments over time,” Chatterjee said.

2. Time to market: “We needed to bring more people together under the umbrella right at the start,” Chatterjee said.   

Folks from the business development side, tech experts and the legal team contribute while building a solution to reduce friction down the line, he added.  The bank tends to team up with fintechs and vendors to reduce time to market for some of its solutions, Chatterjee said.

Fintechs can create solutions in a “fast and nimble” way, which can help Citi remove the timing issue of developing tech in-house, Chatterjee said.  When building solutions that need “network adoption across the industry,” Citi might also look toward third parties, as it might be difficult to spin around technology that is developed in-house, Chatterjee added. 

3. Client adoption: “There is a fine balance between technology and the readiness and adoption of it,” Chatterjee said. 

Often, clients think they want certain technologies but upon deeper evaluation, the tech requires more work to implement into their workflows than clients are willing to do, he said. If adoption isn’t imminent, sometimes it’s better to hold off on an idea. 

Implementing new technology is “like building a bridge from both sides,” in terms of viability and customer adoption, Chatterjee said.