Awards underscore the industry's recognition and support for Swift's Know Your Customer Registry, which helps institutions address KYC compliance challenges.
Brussels, 4 August 2015 - Swift announces today that The KYC Registry has been awarded ‘Project of the Year' in The Banker's prestigious Technology Projects of the Year awards competition. The Registry was also named the ‘Compliance Project of the Year' by the publication.
Luc Meurant, Head of Banking Markets and Compliance Services at Swift, said: "We are delighted and honoured that The KYC Registry has been awarded ‘Project of the Year' and ‘Compliance Project of the Year' by The Banker. The KYC Registry is helping the industry increase efficiency and mitigate cost and risk associated with Know Your Customer compliance. These awards recognise the important role that Swift is playing in delivering innovative, community-inspired financial crime compliance solutions. This is also a great achievement for the many in the industry who have worked closely with Swift to develop the Registry and make it a success."
The Banker's Technology Projects of the Year awards recognise innovation in technology and are open to banks, non-bank financial institutions, third-party organisations, industry bodies, technology providers, consultancies and professional service firms. Entries are judged by an internal panel of editors from The Banker on the basis of innovation, utility and transformation.
The KYC Registry offers a unique approach to KYC compliance by providing access to a standardised set of qualified data and documentation needed to fulfil KYC obligations. Correspondent banks, fund distributors can contribute an agreed ‘baseline' set of data and documentation for validation by Swift, which the contributors can then share with their counterparties. All Registry users retain full ownership of their KYC information, along with control over who can access the data via the secure online platform. There is no charge for data contribution, and data access is free in 2015 for institutions that contribute their own KYC information to the Registry and help promote it to their correspondents.
Swift launched The KYC Registry for correspondent banks in December 2014. In May, it announced that the Registry was being extended to include fund distributors. Swift is continuing to enhance the Registry's standardised content baseline, and will extend its value-added service offering in the area of KYC compliance. Currently, financial institutions in more than 140 countries have signed up to use the Registry as part of their KYC compliance programmes.
The awards from The Banker are the latest recognition of the success of Swift's community-driven approach to delivering financial crime compliance services. Earlier this year, Swift was selected by industry participants as the winner of ‘Best Regulatory Compliance Solution for Operations' at the Financial Technologies Forum (FTF) Technology Innovation Awards. Swift was also honoured as "Compliance Project of the Year" at the annual FStech awards.
For more information about The KYC Registry, visit the KYC Registry on swift.com.
About Swift's financial crime compliance services portfolio
Swift's Compliance Services unit manages a growing portfolio of financial crime compliance services in the areas of sanctions, Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML). The portfolio includes Sanctions Screening and Sanctions Testing services, Compliance Analytics and The KYC Registry. For more information, visit the Compliance Services on swift.com.
About Swift
Swift is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 10,500 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in over 200 countries and territories. Swift enables its users to exchange automated, standardised financial information securely and reliably, thereby lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminating operational inefficiencies. Swift also brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest.
For more information, visit http://www.swift.com/ or follow us on Twitter: @swiftcommunity and LinkedIn: Swift
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