SunGard's Mint Knowledge Broker system will provide the interface between HBOS' IBM mainframe-based payment applications and Swift's new FIN service.

Gordon Meikle, senior manager, payments and international services, HBOS, says: "SunGard came to us with a complete solution for SwiftNet combined in a single product, which was very desirable from a cost perspective, and allows us to streamline all aspects of our payment and settlement operations."

Meikle says the bank also wanted to be able to future proof its system to be able to take advantage of new SwiftNet services such as EBA Step2.

SunGard says the business integration tools offered in Mint tools will allow application interfaces to be re-modelled graphically, helping reduce the risk that would have been incurred in re-writing existing code. The streamlining operations and services on a single platform was also seen as a key benefit.

The HBOS commission comes as bank-owned payments network Swift introduces a penalty schedule for banks failing to meet the year-end deadline for migrating from the legacy X.25 network to the interactive SwiftNet system.

Fifty per cent of Swift's global coimmunity has now migrated to the new network and the interbank co-operative is keen to ensure no slacking in the migration deadline.

For those customers assigned a country window, surcharges will be applied past their three months comfort period, with penalties kicking in from 1 October 2004. For the larger banks not assigned a country window, penalties are linked to the X.25 de-commissioning notice, beginning end-September 2003.

For any customer that only gives the X.25 de-commissioning notice in 2005, penalty payments of EUR20,000 per retained connection per month will apply.