News, Banks and internet banks

Citi has been forced to bring its apologies to about 600,000 customers after the US banking giant sent them year-end tax statements using usual post office with social security numbers printed on the outside of the envelopes.

Due to the "processing error", as the company puts it, letters sent through the US Postal Service in January had nine digit numbers printed on the lower edge of envelopes, though according to allegations they were not identified as social security numbers.

As it became known HSBC’s and Standard Chartered’s CEOs intend to provide charity with their bonuses.

Michael Geoghegan chief executive of HSBC would accept his bonus but give it to several charities. Geoghegan stands to be awarded a bonus of four times his basic salary of 1.1 million pounds (or $1.68 million).

At the same time, Peter Sands, head of Standard Chartered, planned to donate his bonus to charity as well.

UK largest retail bank and mortgage lender Lloyds reported this week that its losses reduced in 2009 even though it was hit by $37 billion in soared loans, mostly assets inherited from rival HBOS.

The bank says it sees improvements this year with impairments continuing to reduce at the rate it saw between the first and second half of 2009. It means that bad debts will drop to about 15 billion pounds this year.

On Thursday BofA’s wealth management head Sallie Krawcheck reported that Bank of America is in process of combining its online brokerage with Merrill Lynch’s web services as a part of a broader push to attract more "emerging affluent" investors.

BofA’s own online service, formerly known as Quick & Reilly, will be integrated with Merrill Lynch online. According to the statement the online brokerages along with Merrill’s call center will be brought under one roof to focus on investors with less than $250,000 of assets.

Citi has blocked the bank account of a start-up social networking website for gay men on the grounds that the blog content is "objectionable".

In a blog posted yesterday, Jason Goldberg, founder and CEO of Fabulis, says: "In a bit of strange and disturbing news, fabulis discovered today that someone(s) at Citibank had decided arbitrarily to block fabulis' bank account due to what was described to us on the phone as "objectionable content" on our blog."

Bank of America is selling its travel commission payments service to Bottomline Technologies. Bottomline plans to serve travel clients via its PayMode electronic network for payment and invoice automation that Bottomline acquired from Bank of America last year.

Travel and hospitality companies along with travel agents across the globe who use the Bank of America travel commission payments service for commission payments, remittance and reporting will upgrade to PayMode.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, Citigroup is in talks with New York-based SkyBridge Capital to sell its $4 billion core hedge fund business.

At present, Citi is in the process of selling about $1 billion of hedge fund investments, $2.5 billion in hedge fund assets that it advises directly, and $500 million worth of investments in small hedge funds, which cited people familiar with the talks.

Last year Citi had plans to offload billions worth of non-core assets amidst the global financial crisis and the US government taking an ownership stake in the bank.

UBS has rolled out IBM's Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZTIC) online banking security hardware to its customers. It is the first bank to offer such kind of functionality.

IBM’s product is a USB-attached device which being connected to a user’s PC increases the level of security above existing protection systems. Using this device customers log into their accounts and confirm transactions via a display on it.

Indian largest private sector bank YES BANK has struck a strategic partnership agreement with Cordys, a provider of software for business process innovation to automate, manage and improve key business processes.

YES BANK will be provided the following features by the Cordys Business Operations Platform - with its Business Process Management Suite (BPMS):

Bank of America Merrill Lynch plans to implement electronic bank account management (eBam) technology from IdenTrust to enable its corporate clients to open and close accounts, as well as modify mandates, online, boosting efficiency and cutting costs.

Besides, Bank of America Merrill Lynch also ‘expects’ to join the IdenTrust Trust Network, allowing it to issue interoperable digital identities that can be used around the world.

A start-up brokerage led by former A.G. Edwards president Tad Edwards, Benjamin F. Edwards & Co, hired a team of veteran A.G. Edwards financial advisers from Wells Fargo.

To comply with the Turkish regulation initiated by the Turkish Derivatives Exchange (TurkDEX) and its clearing house Takasbank Citi’s Global Transaction Services business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea) has introduced third party clearing for exchange traded derivatives in Turkey.

At the moment Citi provides third party clearing for exchange traded derivatives in Germany, Switzerland, Greece and the Czech Republic.

This year HSBC expects its Amanah Islamic banking division to grow significantly with the increased sukuk mandates than in 2009, as started by Razi Fakih, deputy chief executive of Amanah.

The banking company sees in 2010 more than the 15 mandates it had in 2009 for sukuk, or Islamic bond issues, Fakih said.

"We're confident we can do better in 2010," Fakih said. "We see a very bright 2010 in the sukuk space."

Lloyds Banking Group is selling its 70% stake in esure to the online insurer's founder and chairman Peter Wood for around £185 million in cash. Wood founded esure, that offers home, motor, travel and pet insurance, in 2000 as a joint venture in association with Halifax after handing over control of DirectLine to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lloyds purchased the insurer last year when it took over failing parent Hbos.

CitiMortgage today announced the Citi® Foreclosure Alternatives Program, a new pilot initiative that will allow distressed CitiMortgage borrowers to avoid foreclosure and remain in their homes for six months by agreeing to sign over their property deeds to CitiMortgage at the end of that period. In addition, Citi will provide relocation assistance to aid the borrowers’ transition to another residence at the end of the program.