Citi and TIS Offer Companies Cash Liquidity Insight Tools

Citi and TIS want to give customers more insights into their cash flow and working capital.

The companies – Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions and TIS (Treasury Intelligence Solutions) announced Monday (May 1) that they’d expanded their partnership, allowing clients of the two companies to access TIS’ cash forecasting and working capital platform.

“Against a challenging global environment, corporate treasuries and finance teams are focused on improving liquidity and working capital management,” said Stephen Randall, global head of liquidity management services at Citi TTS, in a news release.

“The TIS platform, now available through Citi, supplements our solutions by integrating with client ERP systems to help deliver dynamic visibility over working capital, cash forecasts, and enhanced decision-support for strategic liquidity and working capital optimization.” 

According to the release, companies can use the insights gleaned through the partnership to more effectively optimize liquidity, manage working capital deployment across suppliers and customers, and improve treasury funding and investing.

As PYMNTS reported in March, recent weeks and months have seen a flurry of announcements from financial institutions and platforms — sometimes working together — about trade finance and general, tech-enabled working capital improvements. 

For example, Santander has announced a B2B buy now, pay later (BNPL) product for multinational corporations in collaboration with Allianz Trade and Oslo-based BNPL FinTech Two. This tool lets companies offer their business clients a consumer-style BNPL option with almost-instant approval. 

There’s also trade credit insurance, as offered by the Tepfin X platform developed by Hyperion X. It permits banks and their brokers to receive quotes from across the structured credit insurance market so that insurance buyers can secure risk coverage at lower costs.

And in March, Amazon Pay debuted Express Payout, a working capital tool for eligible merchants via the company’s Seller Central.

The new feature lets these merchants receive deposits of up to $1 million in 24 hours instead of waiting three to five business days for transfers to go through.

As PYMNTS reported earlier this year, smaller businesses often have a harder time getting working capital. The approval rate for business loans at big banks dropped earlier this year to just below 15%, a 10-month low.

And as shown in the recent report “Digital Banking Rises to Meet SMB Needs,” 24% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) say they are concerned about finding affordable funding, creating an existential threat for many owners.