Citi Innovation Labs employees are finding new ways to connect with bank clients, developing self-guided virtual lab tours to show clients the innovation teams’ latest projects. 

“We are working on an idea called ‘Lab in a Box,’” said Gulru Atak, global head of innovation for Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions. “Can we actually take the lab to our clients? Can we bring that experience to our clients so they can continue to see the look and feel of the lab, as well as what we are working on?” 

Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions’ clients include local corporations, large multinational companies, other banks and small- and medium-sized businesses. The department’s innovation efforts include blockchain projects and digitizing client transactions. The bank still had a handful of clients hesitant to transition to digital channels for their transactions before the pandemic, but those clients are now moving to digital, according to Atak.  

Atak said Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions has about 150 clients visit the innovation labs every year to see what the bank is working on, but the current pandemic has made those visits impossible. The virtual tours will help the bank showcase its innovation efforts to clients while adhering to social distancing guidelines.  

Atak said her team is still developing the virtual tours, so specific details on how they will work are still in flux. The goal is to record some of the workspaces to showcase projects for clients, and bank employees can discuss the development. Citi Innovation Labs began working on the “Lab in a Box” concept in recent months after remote work became a reality for banks and businesses alike. 

See also: Inside Citi Ventures’ internal ‘Shark Tank’ D10X

Citi Innovation Labs has always worked closely with Citi’s venture capital arm, Citi Ventures, as well as D10X, Citi’s internal pipeline for employees to pitch ideas to senior leaders. But given the rapidly changing environment and needs of Citi’s clients, Atak said the different groups are working even more closely than in the past. She added that, in some instances, employees from the innovation labs own the projects going through the D10X pipeline. In other instances, employees from the innovation labs help D10X idea owners deliver on their concepts. Examples of past project developed through D10X include Beacon by Citi, a budgeting app, and Proxymity, a proxy voting platform for corporate shareholders. 

While Citi Ventures’ portfolio boasts big-name companies like Plaid, Square and Grab, the bank still relies heavily on internal innovation.  

“How do you future proof a large institution like Citi? You have to place some bets, and you have to create some structures to do that,” Alex Sion, director and co-head of D10X at Citi Ventures, previously said at a Bank Innovation event. “Sometimes I want to build stuff — I don’t want to be a venture investor, but I want to build that thing myself, and that’s where D10X comes in.”  

According to Atak, it is important for innovation teams to continue developing their projects to accommodate clients’ shifting mindsets during the pandemic and beyond. 

“The role of innovation labs is not to just create an environment of servers and databases,” she said. “It’s to create an environment where you can continue to discover, explore and experiment.”