Making ISO 20022 work for you: new services

We at SWIFT would like to hear about your ISO 20022 plans, experiences and questions. Leading up to Sibos, we are publishing a series of weekly blogs on Finextra called "Making ISO 20022 work for you", each focusing on a specific ISO 20022 business case and implementation aspect. All blogs will end with an open-ended question. The purpose is not to start an online discussion, but rather to collect your feedback, some of which will be presented during our Standards Forum at Sibos in Singapore, held from 12 to 15 October 2015. The third blog in our series deals with new services. You will find a list of previous blogs in this series below. Thank you in advance for you participation.

Several financial institutions (FIs) have started or are starting their ISO 20022 implementations. Undoubtedly, their business case to adopt the standard largely hinged on making their systems and operations leaner, more efficient and cheaper. Many of these FIs are also considering adding new services to their corporate customers, for instance in the areas of invoicing, direct debit management, corporate account management, remittance and reporting. Early market infrastructure (MIs) adopters (aim to) offer functionality such as full settlement support, alignment with international standards and market practices, regional market harmonisation, and specific new services to member institutions. This degree of innovation is made possible by ISO 20022's rich data set and extensible information, which allows organisations to embed additional information into existing messages without extensive re-design of the message standards.

ISO 20022 is seen by many early adopters, both in the FI as in the MI space, as a platform for future innovation that can enable new or upgraded products and services. This will help organisations to compete as market demands evolve. It will also pave the way for future collaborations at all levels. But more importantly, what it also shows is that adoption of ISO 20022 should not be a goal in itself, but should be considered a tool that can help achieve concrete business goals, such as the updating of an old system, the creation of a new system, faster payment processing or decreasing operational risk. This certainly constitutes a crucial element in the ISO 20022 business case.

Which new services do you think ISO 20022 may enable for FIs and for MIs?

Previous blogs in this series:

1 September 2015: Making ISO 20022 work for you: regulatory compliance

8 September 2015: Making ISO 20022 work for you: IT architecture