The latest technology news in the wealth management sector from around the world.

UOB, Lazada
Picture: Frederick Chin, head of Group Wholesale Banking and Markets, UOB (left) and James Dong, chief executive officer, Lazada Group (right).

United Overseas Bank and e-commerce business Lazada Group have agreed to work together on retail products and banking solutions for their combined customer base in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. 

The rollout of the collaboration will first affect clients in Singapore. UOB is building out its offerings after its acquisition of Citigroup’s businesses in four ASEAN markets. (That move was completed in November 2022.)

This regional strategic partnership will also see the two industry leaders working together to increase access to financing for e-commerce sellers on the Lazada platform, the firms said in a statement yesterday.

The pact is Lazada’s first partnership with a bank across a variety of payments and financial services in Southeast Asia, as well as UOB’s first regional collaboration with an e-commerce platform.

“Working with an e-commerce partner like Lazada complements our continued effort to bring personalised and innovative solutions to a thriving ASEAN,” Frederick Chin, head of group wholesale banking and markets, UOB, said.

With UOB’s acquisition of Citigroup’s consumer banking businesses in four ASEAN markets, the bank will be continuing the partnership of the Citi-Lazada co-brand credit cards in Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. In these three markets, the cards will be refreshed as new UOB-Lazada co-brand credit cards later this year with enhanced benefits. UOB and Lazada will consider extending the co-brand credit card partnership to Singapore and Indonesia. 

Citigroup
Citi India, part of Citigroup, has completed its first blockchain-enabled letter of credit transaction on Contour for its client, Cummins India, an industrials manufacturing business. Contour is a digital trade finance network, and Citigroup is one of its founding members.

The US bank said that with Contour, it can slash the processing time for letters of credit by as much as 90 per cent from the usual period of five to 10 days. Instead, it takes just three hours.

Through its Treasury and Trade Solutions business in India, the lender served as the letter of credit advising and issuing bank. 

While not strictly a wealth management tale, the development shows how distributed ledger technology, aka blockchain, is shaking up the way that information, contracts, and financial transactions are processed and exchanged.