The high calibre of contenders for the cash management category made it an extremely difficult choice this year but Citigroup has again managed to take the award. However, JPMorgan Treasury Services also has an excellent cash management offering, which is why it is the runner-up in this category.
The cash management offerings from Citigroup include CitiDirect Online Banking, which brings all of a corporate's cash management together, and e-Billing, which it sells to large corporate clients to help them manage business-to-business transactions. Citibank uses e-Billing for its own billing.
CitiDirect Online Banking, one of the bank's core capabilities, has been running since 1999 and in August 2002 had around 6,900 customers with over 17,000 users. The number of transactions initiated in August was 436,000 with a value of $240 billion.
The main features of the platform include payment services, multicurrency transaction services, netting of payments and collections, liquidity reporting and management, and access to receivables information. It also enables clients to initiate direct-debit transactions and letters of credit, and to monitor transactions and create cash reports. It also offers CitiDirect news.
One of the most outstanding features of the CitiDirect site is that it has a comprehensive netting application.