Experience

Our experience covers the following areas:

Strategic Level

• Policy development (at central bank, industry association and financial institution levels) in areas such as payment strategy development, operations risk mitigation, fraud prevention, bank supervision and national legislation 

• External Consultant & Advisors - various advisory roles on bank and bank systems to central banks, banking associations and financial institutions.

Operations level 

• RTGS design, development and implementation (at central bank and financial institution level)

• SWIFT expertise in interfacing design, usage, CUG development and implementation

• Education & training of bank staff in all payments, risk and operations aspects

• SWIFT operational expertise 

• Risk Assessment and Mitigation at a bank operations level

• All issues relating to Fraud awareness and Fraud prevention

• Bank product design and development including legal aspects, document design, establishment of procedures

• Operations management – branch operations management, electronic banking operations management, international trade finance (import-export) 

• Education & training of bank staff in all aspects of payments, operations, operations risk and fraud.

Software 

• Banking software design, development and implementation (both in “in-house” and at commercial software firms). This includes payment systems, trade finance, commercial RTGS systems, wholesale and retail payments and e-commerce. 

• Business Analysis - business/systems analysis, writing functional specifications, quality assurance and the reengineering of payments procedures and internal business practices. 

• Education & training of bank staff in all aspects of specific software

• Project management – project management roles

• Systems implementation & implementation engineering

Citadel Advantage has extensive banking experience in a number of different countries. 

Staff

Stanley Epstein
Company Director & Principal Associate

Stanley holds a Masters degree in Economics and a BCom degree in Accounting from a major South African University. He has 44 years of banking and IT experience, 33 of which were with a major South African Bank. He has extensive exposure to banking practice and banking operations in South Africa, Israel, the USA, Europe and Australia which includes the role of advisor to a number of central banks on payment system, payments policy and payments risk issues and as a payment systems consultant to a global payments software developer.   

His experience includes an industry level role in South Africa during the 1990s where he held several key positions which included that of Chairman: Risk Committee – Payments Association of South Africa and the Vice Chairman – ERAG (Electronic Risk Assessment) Group – Clearing Bankers Association. He has also served as a Board Member of the Bankserv Electronic Funds Clearing Services (Johannesburg, South Africa) and a Member of Strategy Team of the South African Reserve Bank’s “National Payments System Steering Group” that led to the development of the South African RTGS system.

More recently as an Advisor to a central bank on RTGS, Payment Systems Reform and Continuous Linked Settlement Projects he was involved in setting up the original project as well as providing inputs into various specialized aspects such as (1) other payment & settlement systems, (2) securities settlements (3) risk issues, (4) legal, supervisory, oversight and regulatory issues, (5) RTGS business model, (6) RFP development, and (7) Project Management, (8) Operational and Risk Management Procedures. Specific specialist areas handled include RTGS System Design, Risk Assessment and Legal & Oversight issues.

Richard Barr
Company Director & Principal Associate

Richard holds a B.S. in International Business Administration from a leading California University. His professional experience spans 21 years, 5 of which were spent with a leading U.S. Bank. Another 5 were spent honing his global banking expertise, involved with Trade Finance and cross border banking. 10 years have been in the Private and High-tech sectors providing high-level consulting services, business analysis, project management and training to a wide banking clientele spanning the globe.  

More recently as an Advisor to a central bank on RTGS, Payment Systems Reform and Continuous Linked Settlement Projects he was involved in setting up the original project as well as providing inputs into various specialized aspects such as (1) other payment & settlement systems, (2) securities settlements (3) technology, (4) RFI product analysis (5) RTGS business model, (6) RFP development, (7) system testing, (8) operations and (9) Project Management. Specific specialist areas handled include RTGS System Design, Technology Risk Assessment, Complete design and execution of functionality tests and follow through leading to successful user acceptance testing, and system communications & SWIFT.

He has spent extensive time with a diversity of “financial institutional” clients in South Africa, Poland, Sweden, Ireland, Netherlands, Greece, Bermuda, Israel, Malawi, United Kingdom, North America and many other countries. Richard has filled the role of advisor to central banks on payment systems and technical payments issues.

Clients, Partners & Course Attendees

JUST A SAMPLE OF THE BANKS REPRESENTED BY ATTENDEES IN OUR COURSES...

A PARTIAL LIST OF OUR PARTNERS AND CLIENTS...

Doylestown Web Design