Encompassing standards definitions, usage guidelines, bilateral agreements and analysis tools, MyStandards is a collaborative web-based tool to efficiently manage new releases and better understand market practice.
MyStandards is complementary to the Standards Developer Kit (SDK). It will help customers to:
The financial community has been actively involved in shaping MyStandards. The initial set of pilots in the closed pilot stage involved eight financial industry players (Bank of New York Mellon, Bundesbank (T2S), Citi, Clearstream, J.P.Morgan, RBC Dexia, SIX Group/SIS, UK Payments Administration MPG) who worked in close collaboration with SWIFT to fully develop the content and features of the product. Throughout the pilot period, customers provided a wealth of constructive feedback, helped to set priorities for the developers and shaped the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of the platform through a series of usability workshops.
During a recent December meeting in La Hulpe, the pilots reflected on why they got involved and their experience to date. They all agreed that what initially attracted them to the project was the idea of centralised standards-related information.
“Standards information is currently published and documented in a scattered way. You find information in the UHB on swift.com, different market practice sites, internal documents and specifications and information which is shared bilaterally with specific customers. There is no single source. It is important to be able to help customers understand the background to new releases. They are not imposed by SWIFT, but are on the basis of an industry change request. With MyStandards, you can make a judgment call with more context,” said Bernard Lenelle, Senior Vice President, Clearstream.
“We are massively involved in developing messages – and we have to maintain them. MyStandards will help us – and our customers who have to use them later. The analysis tools are likewise going to be very useful,” added Gunnar Dickfeld, T2S Message Coordination, Deutsche Bundesbank.
Rainer Vogelgesang, Senior Product Manager, SIX Group ISO Standards Initiatives, added, “The Swiss Commission for Financial Standardisation (SCFS) is currently establishing its market practice principles as the basis for the upcoming MT-to-MX migration for the Swiss investment funds community. We are convinced that an integrated tooling environment will be a key technological enabler for a smooth migration to ISO 20022. In this context, MyStandards looks very promising to help implementers reduce costs for necessary impact analysis and to shorten implementation timelines.”
A number of additional pilots have already joined the open pilot phase which opened at the end of November to find out firsthand how this new platform can help them to manage standards more efficiently. They are eager to help to test and refine the feature set by sharing their ideas and feedback to ensure MyStandards achieves its goal of reducing costs and bridging the gap between business and technical standards implementation.
The first official version of MyStandards is expected in May 2012.
For more information about MyStandards please contact us at MyStandards@swift.com.