Unlocking payment confirmations for all

From 22 November 2020 all eligible financial institutions are now able to provide confirmation on the outcome of all their incoming MT 103 payment instructions to the Tracker, otherwise known as Universal Confirmations. 

As part of our Universal Confirmations programme, financial institutions will be measured on whether or not they are confirming 80% of their weekly payments traffic within two business days (either credited to the end beneficiary, rejected, placed on hold or transferred to an agent outside of Swift).The measurement score takes into account all confirmations provided to the Tracker to achieve this compliance threshold. This applies to the mandatory and recommended confirmations as documented in the Universal Confirmations rulebook, including the use case where the receiver is transferring the payment to a next agent outside FIN.

From 5 September 2020 the official measurement period is in effect. Initially, your Universal Confirmations measurement score will only be visible to yourself. However, from 1 June 2021, your measurement score will be visible to the entire community in the Observer Insights for Swift GPI members and in the Basic Tracker Observer for non-gpi members.

A simple traffic light system will be in place to monitor compliance and will work accordingly:

• Green indicates institutions are fully compliant.
• Orange indicates institutions have not been compliant for one week. In the case of an orange indicator, institutions have 12 weeks to reach compliance before being issued a red rating.
• Red indicates institutions that are not compliant and have missed the 12-week compliance cut off.

It’s important to note that the improvement period is in effect from 5 September 2020. Therefore, if financial institutions are not compliant two weeks after Standards Release 2020 on 22 November, they will receive a red rating.

Financial institutions using the Basic Tracker with a ‘red’ status will lose the possibility to search for their outbound transactions in access to the search and tracking features of the Basic Tracker. These will be reinstated once the institution has moved back to green status.

Financial institutions always keep their access to the Basic Tracker, even with a ‘red’ status.

For Swift GPI members, Universal Confirmations are mandatory for any MT 103 received on all BICs and corridors across your institution. Make sure you are ready by checking your Universal Confirmations readiness for all your BICs, branches and subsidiaries in the Universal Confirmation Insights in the Observer. 

If you have questions about the measurement rules, you can visit our support tip for more info, or register for one of our upcoming webinars where we’ll discuss the measurement rules in more detail.