Citi has opened a new innovation lab in Singapore designed to technologically enhance client services for institutional customers in Asia-Pacific. 

The initiative is under the bank's global transaction services unit and comprises a client experience centre and a client collaboration centre. The lab is fully interactive and globally-linked, allowing Citi to connect with clients, colleagues and experts worldwide for discussions on future needs and stategic planning with the bank's customers. Clients can "test drive" the new technology ideas through live demonstrations with situation analyses and discussions with GTS specialists.

"The Lab will play an important role in helping our clients navigate uncertain markets. It overcomes the challenge of getting clients to visualise new solutions developed for them; a process that used to take weeks and months can now be done in hours," said Anthony Nappi, region head for Asia-Pacific GTS.

The Citi Innovation Lab is manned by 12 staff and is the first of such kind in Asia-Pacific, the bank said. Citi already has two operational labs in Dublin and San Francisco. For Singapore, the bank partnered with National University of Singapore and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

GTS is a huge market for Citi and delivered for the company as much as $8 billion in global revenue for the first nine months of 2011. Asia-Pacific is Citi's largest net income region for GTS, posting $2.188 billion in revenue and $894 million in net income. These represent 27 per cent and 10 per cent of the bank's Asia net income and global net income, respectively, for the first three quarters of 2011.