Swift demonstrates real-time cash reporting

Swift has been working with 25 member banks in the Real-Time Nostro Account Information Steering Group in an effort to deliver an industry-agreed solution for real-time account and transaction information delivery. The four banks signed up for the pilot programme are: Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Grupo Banco Popular Espanol, Societe General and Standard Bank of South Africa.

Swift has also been working with the vendor community under the aegis of Sparcs (Swift partner advisors related to cash reporting solution on SwiftNet) to ensure that complete third-party solutions are available to support service providers and users implementing the solution.

SunGard eProcess Intelligence, CSK and NCH have all announced that their solutions have been certified with the SwiftNet Ready label for Nostro Account Information for 2003. These vendors, along with Misys and Placid, who have ceritification pending, are taking part in the live scenario demonstrations across the Sibos exhibition floor.

As part of this demonstration Swift's partners will play the role of a bank account servicing institution and will receive query messages from Swift, playing the role of a service user, and generate response messages in real-time to Swift. Visitors can see the query initiated at the Swift booth and view the receipt and response at the partners' booths.

The transactions happen in real-time via a simulated SwiftNet network on the exhibition floors.

Claudio Cassinari, senior product manager for banking solutions at Swift, says: "The SwiftNet Real-Time Nostro Account Information solution is a co-operative effort between banks, vendors and Swift to improve intra-day liquidity management and consequently customer service. By working together, we gain valuable insight into how to facilitate faster take up and integration."

The Swift solution is one of two real-time nostro reporting initiatives being launched at Sibos. On Tuesday, Cable & Wireless will launch to the market and announce the results of the pilot period for its own initiative, known as Cable & Wireless Real Time Nostro (C&W RTN).

Both solutions will make use of Swift message formats, and C&W has also said it will make its service available over SwiftNet in addition to the Internet and virtual private networks (VPN).

The major difference between the initiatives is that Swift's solution operates on a real-time, bi-lateral basis, making use of existing SwiftNet connections within banks, whereas C&W RTN is a hosted hub service, accessed from a Web browser and designed to promote the sharing of multi-bank, multi-currency nostro account data in real time.