More than 100 standards enthusiasts and MyStandards users gathered in New York to discuss latest development and evolution of standards, exchange information and ideas, share experiences and network with peers.
March was a busy month for the Swift community in New York. A series of events were hosted during the week of 2 March to bring the community together to navigate challenges and explore opportunities, including the Standards Forum and MyStandards workshop on 4 March, followed by a full day - by invitation only - MyStandards User Group Meeting on 5 March. In total, more than 100 representatives from 35 leading financial institutions attended and actively participated in the events.
Standards Forum: ISO 20022 is a reality
Opening the New York Standards Forum, Chris Church, Chief Executive, Americas, Swift, Tom Durkin, Global Head of Integrated Channels, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Göran Fors, Head of Market Developments, SEB and member of the Swift Board, welcomed close to 90 delegates from US-based banks, corporates, IT service providers and market infrastructures at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch New York office to discuss the relevance and role of standards, share ideas and opinions in addressing industry challenges such as compliance, innovation and risk management.
The main theme of this year’s Standards Forum was “Standards as an enabler for payments and securities transformation”. There was a consensus among the presenters and audience that ISO 20022 has now become the default financial messaging standard for securities and payment market infrastructures offering new services or renewing legacy platforms. Roy de Cicco, Managing Director, JP Morgan & Accredited Standards Committee X9, Inc. explained that in the case of the ISO 20022 adoption plans for US payment systems, more awareness and engagement with all relevant stakeholders is needed around the different implementation approaches and the means and timing for adoption.
DTCC offers a voluntary model to use ISO 20022 for our Corporate Action services. We estimate that over 100 firms will be live on ISO 20022 in the US by end of this year. The main benefits are increased transparency, real-time messaging, extensions and the ability to evolve with market changes.
The second half of Standards Forum was focused on sharing insights about intraday liquidity reporting requirements and addressing remittance information requirements in the corporate-to-bank space.
George Doolittle, EVP & Head of Global Payment Services from Wells Fargo, sketched an overview of the objectives and timelines of the different regulations that financial institutions need to comply with nowadays. He also shared best practices issued by Liquidity Implementation Task Force (LITF) and suggested it as a useful tool for the standards practitioners.
During the Remittance Information panel, Rich Urban, President of IFX, Colin Kerr, Director, Digital Channels, Global Transaction Services of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Michael Knorr, Head of Payments & Liquidity Risk Management, Global Payment Services of Wells Fargo and member of Payments Market Practice Group (PMPG), addressed the problems of channelling remittance information through the end-to-end payment transaction chain. Several solutions were debated, and the conclusion reached that there is ‘no one size fits all’.
The Standards Forum closed with an afternoon workshop on MyStandards, hosted by William Porto, Vice President, Host-to-Host Product Management and Swift, Corporate & Investment Bank, Global Transaction Services from JP Morgan and Jeff Eck, Regional Commercial manager for MyStandards, Americas, Swift.
William Porto shared his experience of the MyStandards implementation and adoption journey for JP Morgan. Porto also shared the benefits that they have gained from the tool and their plans on leveraging it in the future. After the customer experience sharing session, Jeff Eck provided updates on the MyStandards Readiness Portal for message testing/validation, annual standards release and customer onboarding.
The presentations sparked a lot of interest from the audience and dialogue continued through the coffee breaks around a few boxes of MyStandards’ Belgian chocolates.
MyStandards User Group Meeting
In a ‘state of the union’ introduction, Marc Delbaere, Head of MyStandards, Swift, revealed the impressive 100% growth from 6,000 registered users to more than 12,000 users in just twelve months. Delbaere presented the main themes for the future of MyStandards with an emphasis on working with the industry across different segments in the industry’s ecosystem, from content publishers, complementors to content consumers.
Driving mass adoption is also critical to the future development of MyStandards: “If we want to make a long-lasting impact that helps the industry to standardise and streamline processes in the years to come, it is all about “process embedding”. We are starting to see best practices emerge at the governance level and having User Group meetings is a great way to share best practices and generate peer-to-peer discussions.” Delbaere summarised.
Six speakers from DTCC, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, JPMC, Citi and HSBC shared their experiences with MyStandards. All agreed that they are reaping concrete benefits from the tool. The session wrapped up with discussion on the platform roadmap, with some clear lines of consensus between customers.
“We are glad to have this opportunity to gather our members here at this User Group Meeting to discuss about their challenges and successes. I was impressed by the openness of the presenters when they shared their experience. As the local host of this meeting, it is great for me to hear that their business recognises the benefits of the improved corporate client onboarding experience with MyStandards. We look forward to working closely with the community and improve our solutions and services continually,” says Jeff Eck at the end of the meeting.
Want to know more about their adoption stories and experience? More customer testimonials will be published on the MyStandards website in the coming few months
After the successful events in New York, Standards Forum will carry on its journey to Jakarta, Indonesia on 29 April, Seoul, Korea on 12 May and Tokyo, Japan on 15 May. More MyStandards User Group Meetings are also planned in Asia and Europe in the second half of 2015.
Register now for Standard Forum Indonesia, 29 April:
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