ASX's intra-day corporate action service comprises four daily distribution runs, disseminating both new corporate action announcements and updates to existing announcements.

The exchange says an industry group consisting of ANZ Custodian Services, Citigroup Global Securities Services, HSBC Securities Services, NAB Custodian Services and Westpac Custodian Nominees has played a key role in developing the specification for the service.

Adam Wilson, securities commercial manager, Swift Services Australia, says the custodian and investment management community has cited corporate action processing as the most inefficient and highest risk part of their business.

"By receiving a standardised Swift message from ASX as a central and authoritative hub, it will significantly improve the accuracy and timeliness of investment portfolio valuations and will therefore deliver widespread benefits to both investment administrators and their end investor clients," he adds.

Mandy Rashleigh, head of ANZ Custodian Services, comments: "In addition to improved STP and reducing operational risks in corporate actions, this global best practice initiative enables custodians to focus more on value-added corporate actions information and analysis services to clients."

ASX says the Swift corporate action service forms part of its recently-launched range of reference data and corporate action services, called ReferencePoint.

The London Stock Exchange began distributing corporate actions updates in ISO 15022 format over Swift in August 2004, while in January 2005 the Tokyo Stock Exchange linked its Tokyo Market Information service (TMI) to SwiftNet.

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the Singapore Exchange (SGX) also use the Swift network as a delivery channel for corporate actions data.