How ISO 20022 is helping BNY navigate the future of payments

About BNY

BNY is a global financial services company that helps make money work for the world — managing it, moving it and keeping it safe. For 240 years BNY has partnered alongside its clients to help them achieve their ambitions. 

Today they help over 90% of Fortune 100 companies and nearly all the top 100 banks globally access the money they need. BNY supports governments in funding local projects and works with over 90% of the top 100 pension plans to safeguard investments for millions of individuals. As of June 30, 2024, BNY oversees $49.5 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration, and $2.0 trillion in assets under management.

Headquartered in New York City, BNY is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE: BK) and employs over 50,000 people globally.

The challenge

As the financial industry moves towards adopting ISO 20022 for cross-border payments and reporting, BNY needed to ensure a smooth transition for its systems and clients. 

Migration involved a complex set of steps, including preparation for the coexistence period, and dealing with new formats and standards. One of the first, and most important things BNY did was to establish a dedicated ISO 20022 programme team to oversee and respond to all the operational and infrastructure challenges that come with updating such intricate systems. 

“When putting together our team, we made sure that all the various lines of businesses that would be impacted, as well as the executing and supporting functions – from technology and operations to product management and compliance – were involved,” says Isabelle Bouille, who has been leading the ISO 20022 migration efforts. 

BNY’s decision to adopt ISO 20022 was driven by the promise and innovative potential of better data quality, enhanced efficiency, and improved compliance. 

“To this day, the team sits down every week to discuss the issues and the challenges we face with the deployment of the standard across the industry,” she adds.

Getting started

With CHIPS having successfully migrated on 8 April 2024, we asked Isabelle to describe the preparation process BNY engaged in for this significant milestone. 

“Our preparations started around five years ago,” says Isabelle. “With a dedicated CHIPS migration team in place, we focused on training sessions for our clients, where we discussed the challenges involved, as well as the impact of coexistence. We mirrored these efforts internally with our teams, ensuring that any potential impact was well communicated.”

This is the stage when banks are able to get reassurance that the specifications are understood by all stakeholders. “First, we organised internal testing through the Swift MyStandards platform. Swift built a dedicated readiness portal, which we used to test our message samples, and make sure they met the CHIPS specifications.”

The next step is testing. Isabelle is clear that, “When – and only when – we felt comfortable with this, we started ‘Buddy Bank Testing’, where banks started exchanging messages through CHIPS with another direct participant member.” 

As part of the final push, CHIPS organised dress rehearsals that were extremely important as well, where they were able to uncover certain issues that needed to be resolved or corrected before BNY moved into the live mode.

“Our weekly discussions and reflections on lessons learned have equipped us well for the upcoming Federal Reserve migration in March 2025,” Isabelle says. 

Key outcomes

Since the CHIPS migration, BNY’s operations team has been diligently monitoring flows, addressing interoperability issues and misuses in incoming traffic. 

“Working with a different format, different terminology, and different message flows does of course introduce challenges for these teams – making the job of managing exceptions, interoperability issues between CHIPS and cross-border payments, and misuses in incoming traffic more difficult,” Isabelle says.

So, what lessons can we take from BNY’s experience? Communication between leading groups and organisations during important migrations is key. Whenever the team encountered an issue or cause of concern, they automatically reported this back to the dedicated ISO 20022 programme team where it was investigated by BNY’s internal technology team. 

“This is a great example of how important cross-team collaboration is for a successful go-live and post-go-live experience,” Isabelle notes. 

Isabelle also noted how ongoing dialogue with peer banks through the US Observer and the Payment Market Practice Group (PMPG) was instrumental in addressing common challenges and ensuring industry alignment.

Adoption is key

With the Federal Reserve migration on the horizon, BNY continues to prepare by refining its implementation approach and addressing new initiatives, such as the Hybrid Postal address and the Case Management initiatives coming later in 2026. 

The successful CHIPS migration was attributed to the exceptional dedication of various lines of business. Isabelle shared some examples of how teams were able to contribute. “I'm always proud of the dedication of my colleagues when we go through these migration weekends,” Isabelle says. 

“In the lead-up, we get together several times per day, for several weeks. Then comes the weekend itself where colleagues – spanning several teams – seamlessly work hand in hand, day and night, to determine what is and isn’t working well, and resolve any issues as quickly as possible.”

A lesson, especially for those financial institutions just starting the process of adopting ISO 20022, is that it is doable. As Isabelle says, “It’s in these moments that our comprehensive preparation and time spent to create a cohesive programme team really pays off.”

Looking ahead

The journey towards full ISO 20022 adoption is ongoing, with more milestones still to come. BNY is participating in industry discussions, preparing for upcoming mandatory initiatives, and ensuring seamless transitions for their clients – as should all members of the community.

“The future of payments is evolving, and we are committed to being at the forefront of these changes,” Isabelle concludes. “At BNY we take upcoming changes seriously and we are committed to ensuring that no client is left behind as we embark on this ISO 20022 adoption journey.”