NBB wins major Citi award for payments excellence

MANAMA: National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) has been recognised for its superior performance in executing international payments and fund transfers in US dollars, by receiving the Citi 2018 Straight Through Processing (STP) Excellence Award from Citi Bahrain for the third consecutive year.

The award is presented to leading financial institutions worldwide for meeting the highest standards of efficiency in executing fund transfers and trade finance transactions for clients with minimal manual intervention when going through Citi’s US dollar account.

NBB won the Citi 2018 Award after having achieved an outstanding treasury payments STP rate of over 97 per cent and commercial payments STP rate of over 95pc.

The high STP rate ensures accuracy of foreign currency payments processing by NBB and that the end customer receives payments without any delay.

NBB’s head of bank operations Nabeel Kazim received the award from correspondent banking group director at Citi Bahrain Mohsin Al Mahdi.

Commenting, Mr Kazim said, “I would like to thank Citi treasury and trade solutions for selecting NBB as the recipient of this award, which recognises excellence in the field of payment transactions and reflects on the bank’s high degree of automation.

“It is a great honour to be recognised for our efforts by a globally-renowned financial institution, and stands as a testament to NBB’s continuous efforts to be closer to its customers by consistently providing the highest quality of service. We look forward to working closely with Citi Bahrain on further streamlining our processes.”

Also attending the awards ceremony from NBB corporate and institutional investment banking were head of structured finance and transaction banking Zied Jalali and team leader financial institutions Mona Radhi.

Delegates from Citi were Salman Riaz, treasury and trade solutions head GCC, Levant and Pakistan, Omar Kopti, VP, head of financial institutions for Bahrain and Kuwait, and Salman Alhashimi, AVP, treasury and trade solutions.

Citi’s STP Award is annually presented to banks that efficiently process foreign currency payments, as straight-through processing is an automated electronic payment process utilised by various entities allowing the process to be free of human intervention.

Through the implementation of this process, entities are able to make and receive payments faster than if they were to follow the traditional process.

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