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Worker remittance services offer huge potential for development
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16 September 2009
This year at Sibos, worker remittances are a hot topic. According to Michael Whyte, Marketing, SWIFT, there are several reasons why. “Banksare beginning to realise that migrants represent an enormous source of new business. Some 200 million people worldwide send money home to an average of four or five people which adds up to 800 million potential customers, or over 1/10th of the global population.”
Traditionally, workers remittances were considered by banks to bea basic service that often didn’t justify the provisioning costs. Now the view is they represent both immediate revenue and future crossselling opportunities.
To support this increased interest, SWIFT has been working with a consortium of 30 banks to develop a solution based on ISO 20022: the Workers’ Remittances solution. With 12 providers now certified. The benefits of the SWIFT approach include a fast time to market, reduced implementation times and scalability.
A day of worker remittance sessions saw one focusing on implementation, featuring a panel of experts who have been developing the SWIFT solution. This included system integrator AEG, solution provider Grupo Acotel and Portugal’s largest private bank Millennium BCP.
According to Paulo Sousa Bastos, Director, Global Transaction Banking, Millennium BCP, Portugal has one third of its total population of 15 million living abroad and sending money home. “That’s a market base of 5 million new customers,” he noted. “Because the SWIFT solution is based on standards, it will be easier to exchange related information with correspondent banks and will help us resolve local compliance issues.” The bank plans to go live early next year.
What were the challenges? “Banks here don’t usually deal with XML,” explained Bastos, “so we had to work to integrate the back office.” “This was achieved,” says Artur Pereira, General Manager of Acotel, the bank’s technology partner" by using SWIFT Alliance Integrator to develop workflows from the back to front offices.”
Meanwhile, provider AEG has been implementing the solution at the Banque Centrale Populaire du Maroc. “We used middleware to convert the bank’s proprietary back office to XML formats and added flexible mapping tools to the SWIFT rule book and created an extra automated message to correspondent banks to track non-delivery,” says Dr. Mohamed Sadek, General Manager, AEG.
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