Citi Client Casebook Middle East and Africa 2022

Liquidity and Working Capital 27 The Challenge Vivo Energy (VE) were looking for a solution to streamline and centralize their global payroll and supplier payments process, out of their regional head office in Morocco, across their 24 presence countries. Vivo Energy was previously dealing with different banks and the process to instruct payroll and supplier payments was cumbersome as they deal with each bank separately and send payroll and supplier payment instructions to each bank using different platforms. The Solution To overcome these hurdles and streamline the process, Citi proposed a Multi-Bank Transaction Initiation (MBTI) solution to meet Vivo Energy’s needs. The MBTI solution would help facilitate an increase in the visibility of balances across VE’s banking relationships and empowers transaction initiation for the cash concentration process. Additionally, the solution still allows VE to continue working with their domestic banks whilst being fully integrated with Citi’s cash management solutions. The MBTI solution would be combined with Data Aggregation, to allow VE to view all their 3rd party bank balances. The MBTI solution was implemented for VE across their presence countries to centralize all their payroll and suppliers payments at a central/regional treasury level and directly execute funds transfers from a 3rd party bank account using one single platform for more than 300 bank accounts. MBTI allows VE to create a payment instruction in SAP which is communicated via CitiConnect® for Files to Citi in the CDFF format. Using MT101 messages, Citi instructs the 3rd party bank across their presence countries to initiate a payment from Vivo’s accounts in each country. The Results Through MBTI, VE was able to digitize their payments across their presence countries and overcome the need to initiate transactions manually, especially in the pandemic era where full digitization became a necessity. It also helped them to develop a simpler and more cost effective environment for initiating, controlling and forecasting financial transactions with minimal resources. MBTI allowed VE not only to streamline the payment process in 24 countries and for 300 bank accounts, but also to perform efficiently its banking transactions during the pandemic with next to no interruption or delay. This would not have been possible with a non-digital solution. Vivo Energy plc Streamlined and centralised payroll and supplier payments process brings Vivo Energy newfound efficiency Vivo Energy distributes and markets Shell and Engen branded fuels and lubricants to retail and commercial customers in Africa. Vivo Energy operates in 24 countries across North, West, East and Southern Africa, they have a network of over 2,000 service stations. Additionally, they export lubricants to a number of other African countries.