Behind the scenes of the Migration of the SEPA payment schemes to the 2019 version of ISO 20022 post

Let’s start saying veterans like me haven’t been surprised that much reading the EPC bulletin on SEPA Migration to the 2019 version of ISO 20022, announcing the decision to postpone the go live. People like me with grey hair can’t forget the time when SEPA went live, where for almost one week no one of us left our desk in the office, trying to fix, recover, and mainly understand what was happening or I should say what wasn’t working.
With the hindsight, I realised where the issue is coming from.
Let’s be honest, we can’t blame payments solution providers or the bank’s Program manager, giving them all responsibility.
There is a recuring factor that has been underestimated for long time that I’m happy the EPC finally addressed in its report:
Quote
This is due to reported operational delays and/or the need for additional testing time to ensure a safe migration.
Unquote
It is a matter of fact, Financial Institutions facing the frantic evolution of the payments systems, can't afford a proper testing and certification activity, they don’t have enough skilled resources devoted to identify all use cases must be tested, to guarantee a successful migration lowing drastically the systemic risk.
Financial Institutions in general, pretend - in good faith - to be able to perform basic tests “self-certified” or engage big consultancy players to execute accurate test activities, but in this case as well, considering the result, it is evident is not the right approach.
The recipe to get out of this vortex is to partner with firms specialised and certified in these kind of tasks, where with the support of tools built for this only purpose, there is a drastic reduction of all activities on the bank side, that means lowing the cost of the project, increasing the chance of success, avoiding the risk to exceed the project timeline, finally obtaining a proper professional certification.
I have dedicated 1 year understanding how to fix this problem, identifying qualified players that built their success around this business, taking full responsibility in this critical and not anymore optional part of the project.
I’m happy to have an informal conversation sharing thoughts, case studies, avoiding useless big investments.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/european-payments-council/