Sibos Standards Forum in Boston: standards as a catalyst

The annual Sibos Standards Forum will be held in Boston from 29 September until 2 October 2014. The Standards Forum provides a collaborative platform where business experts meet standardisers to build an efficient foundation for the evolving needs of the financial industry. An industry which is confronted with unprecedented public scrutiny and commercial pressure following the crisis. Financial institutions need to comply with regulations, better manage their risk, invest in the modernisation of services and technologies and look for opportunities to grow their business. All of this in times of shrinking margins and fierce competition.

One can ask the question whether, in the midst of all this, there will be time and a place for collaboration and, by the same token, standardization. As we heard from community representatives at the 2013 Sibos Standards Forum in Dubai, competition does not exclude collaboration. We have seen how, through collaboration, evolving business needs gave rise to new MT and MX standards. At the same time, but quite the other way around, evolving standards (eg, ISO 20022) are driving new business opportunities. This is why I am so fond of our Standards Forum tagline "Where business and standardisation meet".

Every year, we attempt to offer attendees a programme that balances topics appealing to a global audience with a number of specific industry challenges. Additionally, we will increase audience participation this year. After all, our remit is to be a forum!

As I hinted at in my previous post, here's how a typical day at the Standards Forum will pan out this year:

• What better to wake you up than coffee and a short, educational jump-start session? Espresso yourself!
• In the morning, and at various intervals during the day, there will be standards lab sessions, each of which will explore how standards can help to tackle some burning issues in the industry. Some examples include: post-trade automation, intraday liquidity reporting, the success story behind the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), and person-to-person payments.
• This will be followed by a demo dedicated to a particular aspect of MyStandards.
• At noon, we will treat people to a power lunch, during which sandwiches will accompany topics that are on everybody’s mind, such as: the role standards can play in compliance and collateral management; the impact of ISO 20022 adoption in the market infrastructures space.
• The standards directions sessions will debate future challenges, topics of strategic importance and ‘what if?’ scenarios. For instance, on the opening day, we will conduct a performance appraisal of ten years of ISO 20022.

If you'd like more information about the program, just go to www.sibos.com.

We should not lose sight of the main reason why people and organizations want to standardize complex and costly processes, and that is to reduce cost. And that is exactly where standards can be a catalyst.

Join us for dialogue, debate and collaboration at the Standards Forum stand within the Sibos exhibition.

• Contact us via e-mail: standards.forum@swift.com
• Follow us on Twitter: @StandardsForum #SFSibos
• Join the conversation on our LinkedIn group