Citi and Ant International Pilot AI-Enabled Forecasting Solution to Enhance FX Risk Management for Airline Customers

• Ant International’s Falcon TST Model will give Citi’s clients an improved FX risk management solution when selling through e-commerce channels.
• Pilot airline customer of the jointly-developed solution has already seen a cost reduction in their Fixed FX Rates hedging programme for online ticket sales.

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Citi and Ant International announced today that they are piloting the use of Ant International's Falcon Time-Series Transformer (TST) Model to deliver an enhanced FX risk management solution for their customers.

Developed with aviation clients as an initial use case, the solution aims to offer greater payment solutions for the airline industry, which processes billions of payment transactions annually. With airline travel set to continue growing, the joint solution combines Ant International's experience with airline payments and Citi's robust FX solutions to help the bank's clients manage their FX costs more efficiently.

Ant International’s Falcon TST Model is a transformer architecture-based big data model with close to 2 billion parameters. By integrating the latest time series forecasting algorithms, the TST Model predicts future data points by learning complex patterns from large historical data sets using AI technology, the model helps businesses improve the efficiency and accuracy of their cashflow and FX exposure forecasts, allowing them to reduce hedging and overall FX costs.

By pairing the Falcon TST Model with Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution, an award-winning solution that simplifies the FX risk management process for businesses selling online in multiple currencies, the combined solution helps businesses mitigate the risks associated with currency fluctuations by securing FX rates for a defined period. FX rates are locked-in and agreed upon, giving businesses greater predictability in budgeting, pricing and profitability. Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution supports over 70 currencies and is widely used by clients in various sectors including Airlines, Travel and e-Commerce.

With Ant International’s AI-enabled forecasting capability, businesses may utilise Citi’s enhanced solution to improve the accuracy of their sales and FX exposure forecasts. Ant International has already achieved an accuracy rate of more than 90% in the company’s own use cases and expects the solution to help the airline industry reduce its overall FX hedging costs as forecast accuracy continues to improve.

By combining Ant International’s Falcon TST model with Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution, Citi has successfully completed FX transactions for one of the leading carriers in Asia, reducing the carrier’s FX hedging costs in initial live transactions.

Sam Hewson, Global Head of FX Sales at Citi, said: “We are constantly evolving our products and solutions to support new use cases built on our clients’ priorities. Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution supports some of the world’s largest e-Commerce and Travel names and this innovative solution sees us leveraging best-in-class technology capabilities in the broader ecosystem to accelerate go-to-market use cases.”

Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, said: “This is the first industry-tailored solution developed from our Falcon TST Model with a bank partner to serve their customers. It’s an important milestone in our journey to leverage AI for FX management for our businesses, partners, and also merchants. The 30% hedging cost savings Ant International has achieved for the pilot airline customer shows the cost efficiency that can be achieved with AI-enabled FX hedging. We are excited to expand the solution with Citi to serve more businesses and industries.”

About Citi

Citi is a preeminent banking partner for institutions with cross-border needs, a global leader in wealth management and a valued personal bank in its home market of the United States. Citi does business in more than 180 countries and jurisdictions, providing corporations, governments, investors, institutions and individuals with a broad range of financial products and services.

Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | X: @Citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi

About Ant International

With headquarters in Singapore and main operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, Ant International is a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider. Through collaboration across the private and public sectors, our unified techfin platform supports financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth through a comprehensive range of cutting-edge digital payment and financial services solutions. To learn more, please visit https://www.ant-intl.com/