The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) today launched the AFP Global Service Codes™ to help companies identify charges on their bank account statements outside the United States.

The AFP Global Service Codes™ give companies 800 identifiers for banking services that are widely adopted across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific Rim. They extend the AFP Service Codes™, which companies have relied upon as a standard since 1986.

Global corporations will be able to combine the U.S. and global codes to track the increasing number of services they receive from banks around the world, obtain the full value for those services, and to organize, rationalize, and automate their monthly review of account analysis (billing) statements. The codes are also a useful when comparing bank charges during an RFP process.

"As business becomes global and supply chains lengthen, companies need a way to compare apples to apples when they evaluate bank services in multiple countries," said Jim Kaitz, AFP's president and CEO. "When it comes to treasury practices and bank reporting, the AFP Global Service Codes™ reflect AFP's commitment to setting a global standard."

Services covered by the codes include balance and compensation fees, custody, general account, credit, lockbox, electronic funds transfer, depository, automatic investment, paper disbursement, paper disbursement reconciliation, information reporting, electronic data interchange (EDI) and SWIFT services.

An important difference between the global and domestic codes is the length of the code field. The domestic codes are six digits because they are designed to work with the ANSI X12 format; the global codes are eight digits because they are designed to work with the TWIST BSB format.

Both sets of codes are available for purchase, with a discount to AFP members.