New Account Reporting for Corporates.
18 June 2009

The ISO 20022 –compliant messages for bank-to-corporate account reporting are now available on SWIFTNet. The standard enhances the existing account reporting capabilities of the service to allow corporate treasurers to receive more structured and detailed information about their accounts from their banks.

The new messages include reports for intraday activity, end-of-cycle statements and  debit/credit notifications. The messages expand significantly on the capabilities of the previous FIN standard, allowing greater flexibility in the structure and timing of reporting, and richer, more detailed information to be conveyed.  The reporting messages were designed to work in combination with the ISO 20022 payment initiation messages. There are a number of benefits in using a common, consistent standard for payment initiation and reporting, such as improved straight-through processing, better cash position management and reconciliation.

The new messages are supported by an implementation guide, which sets out in detail the correct use of the standard in the bank-to-corporate market.

The service was launched after an extensive pilot programme, involving 9 banks and 7 corporates. The bank participants were: ABN-Amro / Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America, BNP-Paribas, Citi Bank, Commerz Bank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan-Chase and Société Général. The corporates were represented by:  Arcelor-Mittal, Danone, Dow Chemical, General Electric, IKEA, Microsoft and Würth. The pilot programme proved invaluable for fine-tuning the details of the service under commercial conditions and the success of the pilot was confirmed when several of the participants announced their intention to continue using the service after the pilot period.

Early feedback is encouraging. Pilot users have indicated that take-up of the new standard is likely to be faster than originally expected, driven by customer demand. Reasons for faster adoption are the improved standardisation, richer message content and XML technology that allows easy implementation.

For more information about the ISO 20022 account reporting standard, please contact marc.gheyskens@swift.com.