SAP, Citi, RBS To Co-Innovate Cloud-Based Services Platform

SAP AG has announced that it will work closely with Citi and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to co-innovate a cloud-based services platform. The highly interoperable, multi-bank platform aims to seamlessly integrate banks with their corporate customers. A combination of SAP’s deep expertise in enterprise resource planning (ERP), treasury management software and new cloud services technologies is driving the solution development. Together with the industry expertise and global networks of Citi and RBS, SAP aims to deliver a new, innovative solution to the corporate banking marketplace.

“SAP has prided itself in customer-centric innovation, in this case creative innovations in banking that can increase the velocity of information flow between banks and their corporate customers,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, Global Solutions, SAP. “Integrating banks with corporate ERP and treasury systems has always been an expensive proposition for banks and corporations alike. Furthering SAP’s commitment to the cloud, the banking industry and our many thousands of corporate customers, this solution will dramatically ease corporate banking. This will allow corporate customers to seamlessly extend their ERP and treasury systems and interface with multiple banks.”

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Due to size, complexity and a reliance on non-standardised legacy systems, banking architectures have historically been isolated entities unique to each bank. This has led to businesses and banks shouldering the burdens of higher connectivity costs and juggling multiple relationships with one another. SAP, Citi and RBS have tasked themselves to define a new, more flexible architectural model that reduces the cost and time-to-value of these interactions. SAP is taking the lead in developing the solution, which is intended to more closely link banks’ transaction systems with the ERP and treasury systems at corporate businesses. This aims to help streamline financial transactions, such as payments, while enabling new, on-demand banking services to be delivered via the cloud.

“We are working toward a solution with SAP to remove integration barriers and facilitate greater connectivity to Citi’s global network of more than 90 countries and over 100 currencies,” said Naveed Sultan, global head, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi. “As a leading international bank, it is always Citi’s desire to bring new innovations to the forefront of the industry. Leveraging the cloud is one effort in Citi’s goal to be the world’s ‘Digital Bank.’ Through our pioneering work here, we hope to bring banks and businesses closer together and create a springboard to new innovations and value creation in the future.”

“The cloud-based corporate-to-bank initiative is an important step for corporate customers toward simplifying the complexity of connecting with their banks,” said Kevin Brown, global head, Transaction Services Product, International Banking, RBS.