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Devoting half his time and 30% of his budget to new initiatives, Citi's Stephen Randall, global head of liquidity management services, has guided the development and launch of corporate-client liquidity management services built on top of the latest technology while fine-tuning existing products.
Joining other global banks to support Swift's ongoing blockchain project to facilitate real-time, 24/7 cross-border payments, Citi launched its own cross-border payment service based on distributed ledger technology two years ago. Citi Token Services has been integrated into the existing Citi Services infrastructure, enabling clients to initiate instant funding transfers around the clock between offices in the U.S., U.K., Singapore and Hong Kong. Payments are automatically converted from fiat USD to tokens and back again.
In November, the bank announced that it was expanding the service to Dublin, enabling transfers also in euros, and it is gauging client demand to expand to other countries.
Randall added that his team is also considering adding new currencies and bolting the private-permissioned blockchain on to existing liquidity capabilities, such as notional pooling, for more efficient transfers of excess liquidity across geographies.
"Stephen is very forward-looking, client centric, and highly innovative in his approach to leveraging new technologies," said Ricardo Josua, cofounder and CEO of Pismo.
Josua worked closely with Randall in 2024 in a strategic partnership that implemented Pismo's cloud-based, demand-deposit technology within Citi's global network. That effectively migrated Citi's core banking infrastructure to a cloud-native, microservice-based ecosystem.
"[Stephen] actively seeks to dismantle the limitations of existing financial systems by embracing cutting-edge platforms," Josua said.
Starting in Citi's finance division in 1996, Randall joined the bank's treasury department in 2005 and became head of global liquidity oversight and analytics based in New York in 2012. He developed a keen understanding of corporate-finance priorities as Citi's EMEA treasurer starting in 2015 and international treasurer between 2017 and 2020, after which he led the bank's liquidity management services.
Addressing an advisory-board participant's concerns about imbalances between his company's header account in London and accounts in other hemispheres, for example, his team improved conventional technology to facilitate instant global transfers. That solution became Citi Real-Time Funding, which automatically refills remote accounts dropping below a specified level.
"This is the technology available and here is a client's problem—how do we fill in the gap?" Randall said.
Citi's partnership with Pismo filled one such gap, updating accounts in real-time so they could reflect instant fund transfers. Soon after, Visa acquired fintech.
"We found a strong solution, and Visa's acquisition indicates others saw the value in that as well," Randall said.
