There has been a sharp rise in the number of corporates in Asia-Pacific joining SWIFT, and this is the fastest growing region in terms of traffic. Samsung SDI, NTT Data Corporation, Toshiba and Rakuten are four of the corporations to have recently connected, in order to take advantage of SWIFT's offering for corporates.

SWIFT provides a multi-bank platform for corporates to exchange financial information with banks through a secure, standardised, global, single window. This enables corporations to improve their global cash visibility and gain maximum efficiency from their financial and treasury operations, by rationalising bank channels, centralising payments and collections and achieving greater automation through standardisation.
With more than 1000 corporates already on SWIFT (comprising of more than 40,000 underlying legal entities), levels of corporate connectivity to SWIFT are growing in all regions. Another recent joiner is British Broadcasting Corporation.

An evolving picture, powered by collaboration

Corporates have been able to use SWIFT to interact with their financial institutions since 1998. Since 2005, with the introduction of a new simpler corporate access model, the number of corporations on SWIFT, from many industry sectors, has grown steadily.

Reflecting on the history of corporate connectivity to SWIFT, Hervé Postic, Directeur Général, CEO, UTSIT, comments: "The sustained growth rate of corporates joining SWIFT demonstrates how, over the years, the banking community has embraced the opportunity for corporates to join SWIFT more and more. The level of commitment shown by both SWIFT and by the banks points to a bright future for corporates to reach ever higher levels of operational efficiency in their interactions with their banks".

Looking ahead, Hervé Postic continues: "The next ten years should be devoted to helping local banks in all regions of the world to offer cash and trade solutions over SWIFT to their corporate customers. Education and partnership will remain the key pillars needed to support further take-up of SWIFT by the corporate community."

More functionality and easier connectivity

SWIFT continues to extend and enrich its offering for corporates, with key initiatives including treasury matching via the Accord platform, reference data services, the digital identity solution 3SKey, CGI and the collaborative standards management platform MyStandards. In addition, connecting to the SWIFT network has never been easier for corporates, with the recent launch of Alliance Lite2, a highly secure and reliable, easy to implement and cost-effective cloud-based connectivity solution that supports all types of SWIFT messages and files.

Gottfried Leibbrandt, CEO, SWIFT, says: "We are proud to have reached the significant milestone of 1000 corporates connected to SWIFT. We continue to evolve our offering for corporates, to ensure it brings value for the largest companies but also the smaller and mid-sized corporations that are increasingly benefiting from SWIFT to streamline their interactions with their banks. In line with our 2015 strategy, we look forward to welcoming many more corporates on to SWIFT in order to help them reduce their costs and risk, and increase operational efficiency and visibility in their treasury operations."