This year, Swift marks 40 years of supporting the financial services community in Asia Pacific. As a trusted partner for the global financial community, we work to continuously drive innovation that helps our community to move value securely, reliably and seamlessly across borders around the world.
Serving our community for over 40 years
Swift’s Chief Business Development Officer, Alain Raes, speaks on the many initiatives that Swift has worked on with the community in Hong Kong, which has helped to create a simpler, faster and more secure financial services future for our community.
Celebrating 40 Years of Innovation in Hong Kong
The close partnership that Swift has with its community has resulted in a number of key successes in Hong Kong over the last 40 years.
Together with our Hong Kong community, we have helped transform cross-border payments with Swift GPI, creating a faster, transparent and traceable experience and unlocking new capabilities that are defining the future of payments.
We also continue to optimise our community’s products and services, with a focus on efficiency, automation and global messaging standards to support customers and business growth. This has led to significant expansion in the payments, trade and securities footprint in Hong Kong over the past four decades.
Other accomplishments we achieved with the community include supporting Hong Kong’s financial institutions with sanctions compliance to meet HKMA AML filter testing requirements, Swift’s Customer Security Programme, supporting ISO 20022 migration and the evolution of APIs.
Views from the community
Swift’s new strategy has been warmly welcomed by our community in Hong Kong.
"Change is not new to the banking landscape, and as a community, we’ve evolved many times over the years. Today, our landscape is moving at breakneck speed, and lines are blurring between sectors. Payments, trade and securities are all seeing a transformation, and financial innovation is necessary for us to capitalise on these new opportunities. To successfully do so, we will need to work together as a community, as we’ve had over the last forty years, to address these changes. After all, we have a shared aim – and that is to enable seamless, frictionless and instant payments from one account to another, anywhere in the world."
Stephan Levieux, COO of Payme, HSBC & Hong Kong Chairperson of the Swift National Member Group
“At China CITIC Bank International, we are honoured to be part of the Swift community, which has allowed us to drive new strategies for excellence throughout the years. It is now a critical time for the community to capitalise on the momentum of the Greater Bay Area and stay ahead in the market. We strongly believe that this transformation will be led by emerging FinTech innovation, and we have taken steps to integrate our customer experience across both physical and virtual environments. Swift’s new end-to-end transaction management capabilities and its drive for the adoption of ISO20022 Standard promises increased payment efficiencies and a number of new opportunities for our Bank. We look forward to further collaboration to drive transformation together.”
Christina Pong, Chief Operations Officer, China CITIC Bank International
“As Chong Hing Bank and Swift continue to work together to address the needs of the Hong Kong banking community, we are confident that Swift, with 40 years of strong presence in Hong Kong and its new strategy for greater and simpler cross-border payments, end-to-end transparency and rich data, will help achieve better digital trade connectivity in the region. Together with Swift, we look forward to supporting our customers by continuously and innovatively fulfilling their needs.”
Edward Chiu, Chief Operating Officer, and Alternate Chief Executive, Chong Hing Bank Limited
“Swift has been a responsible and reliable partner of our Bank, and ‘Responsibility’ is one of our core values. We are happy to work with Swift in providing the best solutions to our customers. Today, the global Swift network carries millions of messages daily and allows financial institutions such as OCBC Wing Hang Bank to quickly, accurately and securely send and receive information on behalf of our customers. We are very much looking forward to the roll out of Swift’s new transactional management model which will allow us to offer even simpler, more frictionless payments experiences to our customers. We work with Swift as one community to meet the evolving needs of our customers. This echoes our other corporate value – ‘Forward-looking’.”
OCBC Wing Hang Bank Ltd
A new direction to drive innovation
We are set to see a new wave of responsible innovation. Swift will continue to evolve with our community in Hong Kong to deliver instant, frictionless transactions from one account to another, anywhere in the world with end-to-end transparency and predictability.
Over the next two years, we will expand far beyond today’s capabilities to offer our community comprehensive transaction management services in payments and securities processing. This will allow us to set a path for financial institutions, independently or in collaboration with FinTechs, to create new value-added services that encourage business growth.
In payments, we will enable financial institutions to grow their business and consumer offerings and boost their end-customer experience. And in securities, Swift will focus on improved reconciliation, reporting, asset servicing as well as end-to-end transaction visibility.
We will build on advancements in data capabilities, APIs and cloud technology, to deliver mutualised services and infrastructure that empowers our Hong Kong community to adapt, thrive and grow in the years to come.
