The inaugural meeting of the ISO 20022 Registration Management Group (RMG) was completed last week in Brussels. This group is assigned overall management of the ISO 20022 messaging standard under Technical Committee 68 (TC 68) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) of Geneva.
ISO 20022—the Financial Services UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme (UNIFI) is a newly-published standard Extending the concept of the ISO 15022—Data Dictionary and Catalog of Messages standard. Both cover the usage of a common platform for the development of messages; however, ISO 20022 is designed to standardize messages using eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) syntax.
The search for this standard began in the early 2000s with the widespread growth of Internet Protocol (IP) networking and the emergence of XML as the "defacto" open technical standard for electronic communications.
Around the same time, to shield the platform from further syntax changes, it was felt necessary to better split messaging into its business dimension, on the one hand, and its technical representation on the other hand. The use of a methodology (such as Unified Modeling Language-UML) to capture, analyze and describe in a syntax-interdependent way Business Areas, Business Processes, Business Transactions, Business Actors, Business Roles, Business Information ; from this initial work can then be deducted the associated Message Flow Diagrams and Message Definitions which allow the industry to exchange the information required to convert message Definitions described in modeling notation into a standardized syntax representation.
At publication of ISO 20022, the preferred description standard for all electronic documents, according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), including the subset of electronic straight through processing messages has been XML. On request of the financial industry, the design rules may later be extended to include future open syntaxes, i.e. web services.
ISO 20022 consists of five parts. These include:
Part 1: Overall methodology and format specifications for inputs to and outputs from the ISO 20022 Repository Part 2: Roles and responsibilities of the registration bodies Part 3: ISO 20022 modeling guidelines (Technical Specification) 4: ISO 20022 XML design rules (Technical Specification) Part 5: ISO 20022 reverse engineering (Technical Specification)
Under this approach, which is in-line with the messaging developments undertaken by other industries, the complete models and the derived syntax output are stored in a central ISO 20022 Repository and are serviced by the Registration Authority (SWIFT). The ISO 20022 Repository offers industry participants access to a financial Business Process Catalogue containing: The description of the financial Business Model; The description of financial Business Transactions, including Message Definitions; and The Message Schemes represented in an agreed syntax like ISO 20022 XML.
This flexible framework will certainly encourage users to build Business Transactions and Message Sets according to an internationally-agreed approach, and to use the ISO 20022 standards. If the existing set of Business Transactions and Message Definitions (BTMD) stored the ISO 20022 Repository does not address their requirements, the communities of users can define other BTMDs, and design them from items registered in the Data Dictionary. They can submit these BTMDs to the Registration Authority for approval by the ISO 20022 structure.
The Registration Authority, with the support of Standard Evaluation Groups, will validate the requests and update the ISO Repository as needed by the overall industry and generate the corresponding ISO 20022 syntax output using the agreed ISO 20022 Syntax Design Rules for XML or for other future open syntaxes.
The recent Brussels meeting of the Registration Management Group outlined its organizational role to carry out its work and mission under the ISO 20022 standard. The RMG named its leadership with Ms. Sandy Throne, DTCC/USA, voted Convener and Gerard Hartsink, ABN Ambro/Netherlands, Vice Convener.
Representatives included fourteen countries and eight ISO liaison members representing Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Liaison members included Clearstream, ECBS, EUROCLEAR, FPL, ISITC-IOA, ISDA, SWIFT and United Nations/CEFACT.
Under the ISO 20022, Standards Evaluation Groups (SEGs) were agreed to be formed in the areas of: Investment Funds Distribution: and Corporate to Bank Payments Initiation
The ISO 20022 UNIFI message scheme Registration Management Authority is formed under ISO's Technical Committee 68—Financial Services. TC 68 acts in the capacity of committee secretary and is the central contact for information about the work and scope of the ISO 20022 RMG committee.