Citi deploys Cobalt post-trade infrastructure

US investment bank Citi is set to go live on a new trading infrastructure provided by post trade systems supplier Cobalt.

Citi will be deploying Cobalt for its bilateral trading operations. The vendor claims that its platform can be used across a variety of FX trading types, including buyside, prime brokerage, and retail brokerage.

The firm offers what it calls a joint, standardised record of all trades, which allows clients to manage their post-trade services “in a unified platform”. This, it claims, can reduce duplication, costs, and risk.

Citi is an existing investor and shareholder in Cobalt.

“Cobalt’s platform will help make the processing of FX trades more efficient and automated, supporting dynamic distribution and optimisation of credit lines and delivering benefits to the control environment,” says Itay Tuchman, global head of FX trading at the bank.

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IHS Markit invested in Cobalt back in January 2019. The deal integrated Cobalt’s platform into HIS Markit’s MarkitSERV offering to create a shared post-trade infrastructure.

The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) fined Citibank £43.9 million in November 2019 for failings in its governance and regulatory reporting controls.

The regulator said that the bank had fallen “significantly below the standards expected” between 2014 and 2018.

PRA deputy governor Sam Woods said at the time: “Citi failed to deliver accurate returns and failed to meet the standards of governance and oversight of regulatory reporting which [the PRA] expect of a systemically important bank”.