Citigroup Inc.

• March 12, 2001

Dimitry Sagalchik, Neil Potter, Jack Lemonik (seated), Sushil Chetal and Olga Bulanov

In the highly competitive world of consumer financial services, even the largest corporations are always looking for an edge. Citigroup Inc., the New York City parent company of Citigroup and Travelers Insurance Group, found its edge with a new Web-based, 24x7 currency exchange system.

Citigroup's Crossmar division contracted with NetNumina Solutions, a Boston-based systems integration and consulting company, to develop the new system, called FX Link. The first, and largest, obstacle developers faced was how to provide service that was fast enough for Internet-based e-business and safe enough to pass the bullet-proof security requirements, including Citigroup's extremely tight firewall policies. The project called for two-factor authentication, authorization, data encryption, non-repudiation, Single Sign-On and integration with legacy security. Citigroup also demanded extremely high performance with support for large volumes and low download times for clients. NetNumina solved the dilemma by developing a patented technology that embeds Public Key security into the app so it does not have to make calls outside the system, said Imran Sayeed, CEO and co-founder of NetNumina. This keeps security tight without decreasing performance, and also gives Citigroup the necessary speed without sacrificing safety.

NetNumina used its own Visual Interactive Enterprise Web methodology to map the best technical solution for the business objectives. They then created an architecture, which was not tied to a particular software/hardware platform, and integrated best-of-breed products such as EJB, XML, CORBA, Entrust PKI and Gradient NetCrusader.

User feedback was obtained through Crossmar product managers and from user group meetings. Several of Citigroup's largest users critiqued the architecture and provided comments throughout the application life cycle.

FX Link is scalable, incorporates a high level of security, and integrates with institutional investors' internal systems, which allows it to be accessed securely over the Internet at any time and from anywhere. There was no disruption to Citigroup's day-to-day operations during development and deployment. The pilot ran parallel to the old system during testing, and the old system was not disconnected until it was clear that the new one was running well. Citigroup's IT staff was trained on the application before it was rolled out to end users.

The greatest value of the new system to Citigroup and its customers is that it provides the ubiquity of 24-hours-a-day, real-time worldwide currency exchange to support international Web commerce, said Jack Lemonik, Citigroup's vice president of product development and technology.

End users of FX Link include corporations doing business around the world. In e-business applications, the system is able to provide prices in the native currency of the purchaser, automatically convert them to the native currency of the seller, and complete the transaction in real time with up-to-the-minute exchange rates. This eliminates confusion and the danger that fluctuating currency prices will change the cost of a deal. This results in what Lemonik calls "borderless e-commerce."

Lemonik offers the example of a stock trader in London who uses the system to quote NASDAQ stocks in pounds sterling. With FX Link, the trader sees the price in pounds and pays in pounds. The system then does the conversion so that the deal is completed in U.S. dollars, as required by the stock exchange.

The FX Link pilot took three months, and the project was delivered on schedule. If the company had to do the project over again, they would require more user feedback during the application life cycle.
— Rich Seeley