Standards Forum

The Standards Forum is the place where business and standardisation meet. This group would like to facilitate and encourage dialogue around standardisation in the financial industry, and share views, insights and updates on how financial standards can contribute to reducing cost and increasing efficiency when tackling today's challenges such as automation, compliance, and regulation.

Paul Miserez Standards Department at SWIFT

Making ISO 20022 work for you: regulatory compliance

We at SWIFT would like to hear about your ISO 20022 plans, experiences and questions. Starting today and leading up to Sibos, we will launch a series of weekly blogs on Finextra called "Making ISO 20022 work for you", each focusing on a specific ISO 20022 business case and implementation aspect. All blogs will end with an open-ended ques...

01 September 2015 /regulation /sibos

Paul Miserez Standards Department at SWIFT

Sibos Standards Forum, Singapore, 12 to 15 October 2015: Where standards mean business

Let us remind ourselves of the reasons why people and organizations want to standardize complex and costly processes. It is to reduce cost. That is exactly where standards can be a catalyst and the standards forum a voice. From 12 till 15 October 2015, a legion of standards enthusiasts representing banks, analysts, regulators, vendors and academic...

18 August 2015 /regulation /sibos

Retired Member 

A Holiday for Corporate Actions

A friend of mine once quipped "Welcome to the Hotel Corporate Actions. You can check out any time you like, but you can’t never leave". It was right on the money. The word "dedicated" doesn’t even come close to describing the endless pursuit of automation by a relatively small group of Asset Servicing professionals. We’ve m...

13 December 2014

Retired Member 

What next for ISO 20022?

With the blink of an eye another Sibos came and went. The containers have been shipped out and it’s back to the old grind. Real projects. Deadlines. Pesky users. Endless meetings. Production problems. Planning for 2015. Budgets. Year-end reviews. Bonuses. Holiday parties. Yay! Participants of the Standards Forum left Boston with a real...

27 October 2014 /sibos

Retired Member 

SWIFT Standards Release. Your vote matters.

Back from Sibos? Time to dive into the green books and get busy with the remediation work for the annual SWIFT Standards Release. It comes around every year as sure as death and taxes. How many Standards Releases can one person take in a single career? [Editors note. This website takes no responsibility for the actions of those who attempt to...

14 October 2014 /sibos

Retired Member 

20022 joke of the day

20022 is a very powerful, rich, and flexible standard. We’ll hear about it a thousand times at Sibos this week. Here’s a little light relief from all that serious stuff. On the one hand it is possible to extend the standard through the use of Supplementary Data Components (aka "extensions"). Additional data elements can be added to a m...

01 October 2014 /sibos

Retired Member 

Sibos 2014 Standards Forum Preview

Yes folks, it’s that time of year when 7000 bankers from around the world congregate to catch a glimpse of the real brains and architects of our industry at the Standards Forum. There should be no doubt in our minds that financial services runs on standards. Just ask yourself, where would be without SWIFT? Where would be without the FIX Protoc...

29 September 2014 /sibos

Retired Member 

Industry Standards for 200

As I write, I’m on my way home from a punishing 3-day trip to Denver for the quarterly ISITC meeting. I didn’t set foot outside from the moment I checked in on Sunday morning until it was time to head back to the airport. Denver is a curious location inasmuch as it’s not really local to any ISITC members, but there is a long-standing ISITC polic...

04 June 2014

Retired Member 

ISO Week

Since 1947 ISO has published close to 20,000 standards - standards for just about everything - plastics, glass, screw threads, surgical implants, for example. Shipping containers are another good example, possibly the poster child of all standards in terms of the benefits realised - the impact on global economic growth since the international ado...

09 May 2014

Retired Member 

Standards Forum 2014 - A reflection.

Part III in a series of blogs around the 2014 Standards Forum events. Standards are often criticized. Painstaking to develop, some might say painful, and adoption can be frustratingly tedious and drawn out. To wit, I first started talking publicly about 20022 as long ago as 2006 and look where we are now. To be fair though, this is largely true...

05 April 2014