ISO 20022 is an emerging global and open standard that impacts SWIFT cross-border payments and cash management messaging. Processes and value chains in financial services often cover different geographical and business areas. The proliferation of different messaging standards in the financial industry creates problems in automating these end-to-end chains. ISO20022 aims to resolve this issue as it improves end to end processing across domains and geographies that currently use vastly different standards and information formats. It is supported by a central repository, which includes a data dictionary and a catalogue of messages – and is accessible to all. This move will relieve institutions in a payment processing chain of the obligation to pass on complete data.

Transitioning to ISO 20022 definitions and structures will improve transaction data quality. While centralised orchestration, translation and protocol mediation services will enable institutions to continue with the formats and protocols they use today, and to implement ISO 20022 at their own pace without impacting the rest of the community; institutions will benefit immensely by investing to build the necessary expertise and capacity to plan for a smooth yet inevitable transition. From the end of 2022 the MT standard will be supported for backward compatibility purposes only. New developments will be based on ISO 20022 data, and will require institutions to implement structured data capabilities.

Fiser Consulting understands that moving to ISO 20022 is a significant undertaking, and provides assurance for delivery of a complex yet effective transformation strategy for your institution.

Click here for more detailed information on Swift ISO20022 adoption.