• Other Consumer Credit In addition to loans for shelter and education, we make a great deal of credit available for the personal needs of consumers in our community. Through revolving lines of credit like Ready Credit and Checking Plus, installment loans, auto loans, and boat loans, we had at the end of 1981 almost $1.5 billion in outstanding credit to consumers in the New York metropolitan area. We also offer four credit cards: MasterCard, Visa, and our own Diners Club and Carte Blanche; another $2.4 billion was outstanding to American consumers at the end of last year on these cards.

A special feature of the personal-loan process is our Financial Assistance and Counseling for Consumers (FACC) program, through which we take a second look at every application for a personal loan turned down. Applicants whose credit history-or lack of it-suggests the need for counseling on the use of credit 'may get a loan after this second look. Perhaps more important, they get expert financial counseling with the loan. At the end of 1981, the outstanding loans made through FACC totaled $5.4 million; 363 loans were made during the year, for a total of $3.2 million, at an average size of $8,815.

The credit industry's experience with the bankruptcy law has clearly demonstrated again what we have learned through FACC: the need for educating the consumer about money management. So during 1982 Citibank will broaden its efforts in consumer credit counseling by creating and testing its own service, targeted at providing consumers with an in-depth understanding of prudent money management and presenting them with alternatives to short-term financial stress. • Other Services for Consumers The same commitment to sharing our financial expertise that led us to embark on credit-counseling programs has resulted in the development of consumer publications and activities aimed at reaching many more people in our communities. For example, for more than a decade we have distributed in our branches an award-winning monthly publication, Consumer Views. Last year more than a million copies, in both English and Spanish, reached thrift-minded New Yorkers. We have also continued to publish our series on such financial topics as Borrowing Basics for Women, Mortgage Basics for Home Buyers, and Strictly Confidential: How Citibank Protects Your Privacy.

More recently we ve gone "live" with our financial information by putting on seminars all over the metropolitan area on topics that, judging by the attendance, are of great interest to our customers and other consume. s. Standing-room-only crowds heard speakers talk about "Hearts and Dollars for dual-income couples-on Valentine's Day-and "Many Happy Returns," covering income taxes, in November. More than 600 people attended a "Real Estate Flea Market at our landmark branch at 55 Wall Street to get information about home ownership, and another 2,000 jammed the Hyatt Hotel for a seminar on co-ops called "Castles in the Air. Our Queens Region helped 500 senior citizens learn more about "Making the Most of Retiring in the 1980s and our Long Island branches sponsored 32 sessions on "Financial Planning for Household Managers" in such convenient locations as Macy's in Roosevelt Field.

We have also supplied speakers to programs put on by others, such as the quarterly preretirement seminars held by the New York City Department of Human Resources, the Women and Finance Workshop series sponsored by the YWCA of White Plains and Central Westchester, a meeting of the Hadar Older Adult Group of the Riverdale YM-YWHA, Brooklyn Union Gas's brownstone conference, and a meeting of Home Economists in Business about changes in the tax law in 1981.

Another kind of special service for consumers is making banking easier for customers with special needs. Our Citicard Banking Centers at 38 sites offer dialogue in Spanish, and 10 branches will have Chinese-programmed machines in mid-1982. Our Chinatown branches also have literature in Chinese, while Greek material is available in Astoria, Queens. We have installed special facilities, such as the part-time branch we opened last year at the Great Kills Senior Center on Staten Island, for on-site banking.

Financial
Services

for Businesses

• Credit for Businesses Local business, small and large, is the heart of a community's prosperity, and credit is essential to business. Citibank has organized to assign full-time lending officers trained in the financing needs of businesses. Each of our six banking regions has a Community Business Team to make loans to local businesses and professionals with sales of up to $20 million. Expert assistance is provided, and loan approvals are rapid. At year-end 1981, their combined portfolio of outstanding revolving credit, short-term seasonal loans, and long-term loans totuled $278 million. In 1981, the maximum amount offered on our business line of credit was increased from $25,000 to $100,000. Borrowers are billed for interest charges monthly, and may make principal payments as their cash flow permits.

Small businesses may also apply to our Economic Development Center (EDC), a special lending unit that makes available loans and financial counseling to businesses that don't meet the bank's normal credit criteria. EDC particularly looks for minority entrepreneurs, businesses that create jobs, and nonprofit community facilities. We estimate that EDC's 40 new loans, amounting to $3.9 million, helped create 365 jobs in our community in 1981.

The portfolio of loans of this special lending unit totaled $13.9 million at the end of 1981, a year in which high interest rates curtailed borrowing by many businesses. This portfolio represents more than 2,900 jobs created in the New York area.

Both the Community Business Teams and the Economic Development Center work with the Small Business Administration (SBA) to expedite SBA-guaranteed loans of up to $500,000 for their customers. Citibank remains the largest SBA lender in New York State.

One source of referral for small-business loans is the Economic Capital Corporation (ECC), a municipal economic development group that helps small businesses with financial packages and processes a revolving-loan fund. Citibank's President, William I. Spencer, serves on the board of ECC, and the head of our Economic Development Center is on the loan-review committee.

•Real Estate Credit While real estate is big business in New York, it's very specialized, and Citibank has created specially designed products for developers. Through our Real Estate Industries Division, we had outstan ling construction and other short-term real estate loans at the end of 1981 of $360 million.

A third of that portfolio was held by Citicorp Community Development, Inc. (CCD), our community housing subsidiary, which is the largest multifamily moderate rehabilitation construction lender in New York. CCD achieved that distinction by providing $129 million in construction loans, seed money, and long-term loans last year for the renovation of 2,685 units of multifamily housing-bringing its 11-year total to $538 million and an impressive 24,000 units!

A relatively new area of activity. for CCD has been financing co-operative conversions, which it has done both as the construction ler.der and as part of a joint venture. In the latter role, CCD has been involved in the creation of 328 moderate-income co-op units. In 1982 it expects to look at participation in two tenant-sponsored co-op projects covering more than 2,000 units. The subsidiary is also now spending much time and effort to develop a workable program involving the New York State Housing Finance Agency and HUD, which will tap secondary financial markets for long-term funding of moderately rehabilitated multifamily housing.

The President of CCD is a member of the Mortgage Cominittee of the Community Preservation Corporation, a nonprofit housing rehabilitation consortium established by New York banks in 1974. Citibank provides 10% of the consortium's $100 million loan pool, making us the largest participant in an organization that has rehabilitated 8,896 apartment units through $80 million in loans.

• The Flatbush Project Our special pilot project in Flatbush completed the fourth of its planned five years in 1981. When we undertook this research and development project, we wanted to study the role of a financial institution in neighborhood economic development, choosing a transitional neighborhood representative of many others.

Our work has been in two primary areas: housing rehabilitation and commercial-strip revitalization. On the housing side, Citibank has pioneered in the application of government housing programs to Flatbush and, in conjunction with Citicorp Community Development, we have made $18.3 million in loans for the rehabilitation of 893 units of moderate-income multifamily housing in 37 buildings. Our emphasis has been on moderate, tenant-in-place rehab, and this commitment has carried over to the conversion of co-operative apartments. New York City's rental rate of 75% is extremely high, and Citibank supports a greater degree of apartment ownership among New Yorkers of all income levels. So our Flatbush project sponsored the rehabilitation of the first non-eviction co-operative conversion in that area, and is also beginning to work with low-income tenants on co-op plans.

The commercial-strip area is still hampered by the absence of government subsidies to stimulate investment. In 1981 we commissioned a study of the substantial vacant second-story space along Flatbush Avenue and continued to work with merchants and the local development corporation on a variety of projects, including a 900-vehicle parking garage, development of a commercial block front on Church Avenue, and the proposed rehabilitation of the Loews Kings Theater.

Our professional staff in Flatbush will conduct an in-depth evaluation of our pilot project in 1982. The results of that evaluation will be made public, in the hope that others may benefit from our labors and our lessons.

Some conclusions are already clear. We know that there is a continuing and pressing shortage of long-term money for housing rehabilitation. We have learned that commercial-strip renovation doesn't tomatically follow housing renovation, and that a number of problems; including a lack of subsidy programs, make it a harder issue to tackle. We have found that the high level of unemployment in Flatbush impedes its revival, and we want to direct some resources to that problem in 1982. Finally, we will be looking to understand how neighborhood-development products and services we have developed can become part of Citibank's mainstream retail business.

• Other Services for Businesses in much the same way that we share our financial expertise with consumers, we provide seminars, publications, and special services for businesses in our communities. Last year saw the publication of a major book, The Banking Guide for Growing Businesses, which describes in detail the kinds of credit available for businesses and the ways to get it, as well as government programs and agencies that can help.

In 1981, when Women Business Owners of New York held its Third Biennial Conference on Wonen in Business, for 6,000 participants, Citibank played a sponsorship role. We presented five seminars on matters of business and personal financial interest for women entrepreneurs and hosted a special luncheon on "Women and Success"

We also put on local seminars for business people: a conference for 300 people currently involved in the export/import business in Queens or wanting to get into it; a seminar for 80 brokers in Upper Manhattan; a seminar for property owners in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to describe public- and private-sector support for. investment; and a seminar on financial planning for businessmen in Freeport, Long Island; to name a few.

We offer a number of special services for our business and professional customers, such as guidance on raising venture capital, account reconcilement, lockbox and factoring, direct deposit of employees salaries, and employee savings and pension plans.