The new centre will increase SWIFT's presence in the Asia Pacific markets and ensure that its global membership can benefit from the economic growth, innovation and resources emerging from this part of the world.

Located in Bangsar South, the SWIFT Kuala Lumpur Corporate Services Centre offers a wide range of services such as IT development, qualification testing, support, business operations, accounting and finance analysis and transactional functions. It works closely with functional teams in the U.S. and Europe centres to serve SWIFT's offices around the world. The centre currently employs around 40 staff and is expected to grow to 100 positions over the next three years.

Michel Christophe, formerly Group Financial Controller, has been named Head of the Kuala Lumpur Corporate Services Centre to oversee the daily operations and management of this new site.

Francis Vanbever, Chief Financial Officer, SWIFT said: "We recognise the shift of the global economic centre of gravity to the East. We have established this centre to reflect our belief in continued growth in the Asia Pacific region and to further strengthen our back-office operations to serve the global SWIFT community."

Alain Raes, Chief Executive, Asia Pacific and EMEA, SWIFT said: "The new centre is an important milestone for our Asia Pacific business. We now have a stronger physical presence in the region to support our Asia Pacific strategic initiatives and to meet the growing needs of our customers and the industry."

"We are pleased to select Kuala Lumpur as our new corporate services centre, based on its excellent balance between the quality of doing business and the cost of doing business. To come to this conclusion, we have considered many parameters such as the maturity of business establishment processes, support by the government, the availability of talent and the quality of office location," added Mr. Vanbever.

"SWIFT has also been increasing its existing global marketing presence in Singapore as part of a corporate strategy to grow our footprint in Asia Pacific for the benefit of regional and global customers," said Mr. Raes.

SWIFT has been in Asia Pacific for over 30 years, starting in Hong Kong and Singapore. Three regional offices have been opened in Asia since 2005, bringing the total to eight commercial and support offices including our customer support centres in Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as an Operational Central Control Centre.