Headquartered at the WeWork offices in Moorgate, the lab will also host the Emea operations of Citi Ventures, the team in charge of venture capital investing and external partnerships driving innovation, as well as Citi's D10XSM Program, an internal strategic growth model that enables Citi employees to take new business ideas from concept to launch.

Citi established its first innovation Lab in Dublin in 2009 and has since expanded the network to locations in Israel, Singapore and Mexico, with more than 250 senior technologists globally.

The London lab will undertake rapid research, experimentation and prototyping of next-generation technology with a focus on data science and visualization as well as high performance computing, says Paco Ybarra, global head of Markets and Securities Services

“The financial services industry has historically been a large user of technology,” he says. “We have always invested heavily in digital, but what we are seeing now is a step-change in both the investment we dedicate to technology and the pace of the evolution. The addition of London to our network of Global Innovation Labs highlights our commitment to the UK as a strategic hub for innovation”.

Previous successful applications developed by Citi’s Innovation Labs in the Markets and Securities Services space include the mobile application of Velocity, Citi’s institutional research and trading platform with over 82,000 clients in 130 countries; and Proxymity, the digital Proxy voting platform successfully piloted at the end of last year.

Citi’s Markets and Securities Services business currently employs more than 10, 000 people working in technology.