Due to the start of the go-live and the coexistence period for ISO 20022 for CBPR+ changing to 20 March 2023 some of the information in the content is out of date. For more information on the migration to ISO 20022 in payments please visit our readiness page.
With the completion of the FINplus RMA bootstrap and the start of early adoption, it’s been a busy last few weeks in the CBPR+ world for our community. In particular, there has been further progress on messaging interface upgrades for the receipt and handling of multi-format MX messages. Now though, everyone’s focus should be on testing. There is only September to mid-November to prepare before the big go-live date of 20 November.
Data truncation has also been high on the agenda as a key compliance challenge during coexistence. We’ve recently surveyed major originating banks on their activation plans. Based on their feedback, we now expect 15%-20% of total cross-border payments traffic to be originated in the ISO 20022 format at the start of coexistence. Less than 1% of that is expected to carry rich data elements, with no signs of increase through the first year of coexistence. This approach has been reinforced by the recommendation from the Payments Market Practice Group (PMPG) to avoid the origination of rich data elements until November 2023.
Standards: PMPG and CBPR+ update
The PMPG have updated their ISO 20022 Migration and Interoperability Considerations paper. One of the key updates is the recommendation (now being followed by many ISO 20022 adopting communities) to avoid the origination of rich data elements for cross-border payments until November 2023. This includes Ultimate Debtor, Ultimate Creditor, Category Purpose, Structured Remittance Information and Related Remittance Information.
The CBPR+ group have also published their Data Integrity Market Practice Guidance paper. This guidance defines the recommended market practice for reporting and querying truncated or missing payment information using the MT messaging standard.
FINplus: CBPR+ early adoption and weekly update to the ISO 20022 Readiness Directory
CBPR+ early adoption began on 21 August 2022. Participants interested in starting the exchange of CBPR+ messages on the FINplus live service with selected counterparties can do so before the general go-live in November. Both the sending and receiving BIC(s) first need to be subscribed to the Early Adopter (‘EA’) CUG category – this is done by submitting a FINplus live Change e-order form. For a summary of preparation activities for early adoption, see the CBPR+ Early Adoption Checklist.
To help in finding counterparties for community testing or early adoption, we are now publishing a weekly update to the ISO 20022 Readiness Directory, alongside the existing monthly one. Each Wednesday, participants can see who is sending CBPR+ messages on the various FINplus services. The ISO 20022 Readiness Directory is available in the Downloads area of the SwiftRef Data Portal. For more information on the contents of the file, see the SwiftRef ISO 20022 Technical Specifications.
On 21 August 2022, CBPR+ messages and the In-flow Translation service were also activated for testing on the FINplus pilot current service. We recommend that participants continue using the FINplus pilot future as the primary service for their readiness testing activities.
FINplus RMA bootstrap complete
On 30 July 2022, we completed the FINplus RMA bootstrap. This is to provide a synchronised starting point between the RMA authorisations on the FIN and FINplus services for payments messages. Reporting messages were included for users who had opted in. At the same time, central consistency checks were enabled to preserve synchronisation across the two services for pacs.008 / MT 103 and pacs.009 / MT 202. Finally, Alliance Cloud users were enabled for central relationship management on the RMA Portal.
We recommend that all participants connect to the RMA Portal and verify the bootstrapped records, to identify any discrepancies between the central database and their local database, and take corrective actions where needed. To assist with this exercise, please see the updated Central RMA Validation Guidelines which include instructions and a link to the new RMA comparison tool. Clean-up actions on the central RMA records have also been identified: see Knowledge Base article 5025629 for more details on the activities and the timelines.
For any other information on the FINplus RMA bootstrap, the consistency checks, and related set of readiness activities, please see the RMA Portal Getting Started document. Or attend one of our live sessions in September and October.
Customer Readiness: It’s time to engage in active testing of CBPR+ flows
As we get closer to November it’s now time to engage in active testing of CBPR+ flows. All technical requirements, such as messaging interface upgrades and configuration for connectivity testing, should now be complete. You can test your FINplus connectivity and the receipt of multi-format MX messages by leveraging the Swift Test Sparring Partner (TSP) service to trigger CBPR+ messages to you. A readiness test catalogue has been released to get you started with a minimum set of recommended test cases. To learn how to work with the application, we invite you to watch this live demo session - or attend a future one - and the learning material available on Swift Smart.
Don’t forget, it will be mandatory for all non-gpi financial institutions to comply with Universal Confirmations for pacs.008 messages on FINplus or ISO 20022 payment market infrastructure legs on Swift. This is on top of the existing requirement to provide Universal Confirmations on MT 103 messages. From November 2022, Observer Insights will measure your compliance with Universal Confirmations based on both your MT 103 and pacs.008 confirmations.
For more information, please consult our Universal Confirmations support page.
FCC: Payment Controls additionally provisions ISO 20022 services
To support continued testing of ISO 20022 flows, Payment Controls has additionally provisioned the following ISO 20022 service.
In Pilot:
- CBPR+
- Market Infrastructures: Payments Canada, Reserve Bank of Australia, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, EBA Clearing S.A.S., European Central Bank.
In Live:
- Market Infrastructures: Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank of Thailand, Bank Negara Malaysia, Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (activated).
For the full list of the various ISO 20022 services (market infrastructure migrations and CBPR+) supported by Payment Controls and Transaction Screening for pilot and live, please refer to the following Knowledge Base article.
Additionally, we’re running a number of customer webinars to help customers prepare to screen MX messages in Transaction Screening and Sanctions Screening.
To register for our training webinars, go to the Transaction Screening Support Page on MySwift.
Resources: What’s new?
- To summarise what it means to be ready for November 2022, we’ve recently published two new resources. The ISO 20022 Community Readiness Deck, available in our document centre, is a high-level presentation for use in your conversations with counterparties or internal stakeholders. To self-assess your own level of readiness for the start of coexistence, there’s a new Interactive Readiness Checklist on MySwift, with pointers to the more traditional documentation for details.
- Speaking of which… Our Getting Started, Customer Adoption Guide and Early Adopter Checklist have gone through another maintenance update to reflect the successful completion of the FINplus RMA bootstrap and the start of CBPR+ early adoption. Next in line will are the Customer Testing Guidelines, with an update due at the end of September.
- Finally, we’ll soon complete the collection of Adoption Briefings on Swift Smart for 2022. #11 will cover data truncation, while #12 will explain how gpi core services are migrating to ISO 20022. We expect both to be available by mid-September.
The ISO 20022 Support page on MySwift has also been refreshed. Please make sure you bookmark it!
