ISO 20022 to the rescue…
FEBRUARY 17, 2020
ISO 20022 is the future for all financial standards initiatives. It has been designed to avoid business communication confusions, so information can be processed and exchanged worldwide clearly and consistently. ISO 20022 a streamline communication for payments, securities, funds, foreign exchange trading and credit card sectors.
ISO 20022 is providing a new opportunity to transform international payments and the payment market infrastructures. All major currencies are in the process of adopting ISO 20022 to further enable the modernisation of cross-border payments.
The Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) working group is an expert group overseen by the Payments Market Practice Group (PMPG); which has been defining the usage guidelines for consistent use of ISO 20022 in cross-border payments.
Now, users of MTs; categories 1, 2 and 9; are required to use ISO 20022 messages (as defined by CBPR+) to replace those flows, at the latest by November 2025. If you are using the previous MTs messages on the SWIFT Net FIN network, you are affected by CBPR+ and you will need to prepare to replace these MTs. If your business involves being an intermediary in the payments process, you may need to be able to send and receive CBPR+ payment instructions from November 2021. If you are typically an ordering institution or a beneficiary bank, you may have more time to make the switch.
How to prepare for these changes? The first step would be analysing the impact on the business processes and the related internal systems, understand the new language used by these messages and liaise with the interfaces, application and middleware software vendors to plan for the suitable upgrades to take place on time.
VERMEG Swift Converter is the solution that provides a wide range of technical possibilities and transformations tools, it is a middleware application that centralises all the incoming flows and the generated outgoing flows, regardless of origin or destination. It caters natively for a range of message formats, including both ISO15022 and 20022. Swift Converter offers automated message identification, parsing, mapping, transformations and sending along with a set of monitoring tools.
As ISO20022 sender or receiver, VERMEG Swift Converter allows transformation from ISO150022 format to ISO20022 format and vice versa, it has been designed and built with a high level of abstraction to support a wide range of message configuration, customisation and mapping. It is possible to implement further technical and operational controls to fulfil requirements coming from the technical and business departments.
To learn more about how VERMEG Swift Converter can help you prepare for the ISO 20022 transition, contact us today.
Haythem HSAINI – Project Manager