Brendan P. Farrell Jr., executive vice president and general manager for SunGard’s XSP, says firms are moving beyond the proof-of-concept phase.
Q: What SWIFT-related product trends have you seen among your clients for this year?
A: We are seeing a continued migration toward 20022, with more firms moving beyond the proof-of-concept phase and beginning to highlight one or two pilot projects.
Having tools that can facilitate this process has helped firms greatly. DTCC transformation and the SWIFT 20022 format are making inroads and have, for many firms, already become the de facto messaging format for intersystem communication.
Some challenges remain, however. Updating all of the systems dependent upon the legacy DTCC CCF [Computer-to-Computer Facility] feeds remains a large challenge for many firms.
Whereas technology solutions offer assistance to customers by bridging the gap from the CCF format to the 20022 format, many firms have come forward seeking to expand this approach by converting the 20022 feed into the CCF file.
Q: What will be the hot SWIFT-related ops trends for 2015?
A: Reducing total cost of ownership in the securities servicing space will continue to be a big trend in 2015.
Financial services firms are looking to utilize managed services and business process as a service (BPaaS) to help reduce spending large sums of money on replicating non-differentiating processes so they can focus on their core competencies.
Another area is the progression of ISO 20022 and SWIFT’s plans around ISO 15022 coexistence.
Q: Why do you think these trends are underway?
A: The primary reason is economics. We are seeing multiple trends away from self-hosting and self-management (applications, processes, services) which are brought on by competitive pressures, economics and commercial considerations and a desire to offer better and more complete solutions to customers.
The move toward greater 20022 acceptance supports the trend of reducing manual or siloed processes and increasing automation and integration; having a consistent and flexible data standard is crucial for operations to scale.
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