Darryl Twiggs, executive vice president, product management SmartStream, says cost-cutting and ISO 20022 messaging are hitting home for firms.
Q: Could we talk a little bit about a paradigm shift you’re seeing? Why do you think that’s happening?
A: When we look at what’s happening with the banks today, there’s enormous pressure to cut operational costs, the cost of ongoing support for their existing systems.
Each of the clients that we talk to, including new clients, have a plethora of systems which are often individual purchasing systems for a particular asset type. Banks end up with many hundreds, if not thousands, of solutions that they have to support.
We’re doing a very active drive to rationalize the number of systems that a bank has to support.
We’ve seen the emergence of externalized utilities, which we participate in. There’s a paradigm shift from batch-based file processing delivered by FTP, to message-based processing, which is then consumed by whatever service requires that information.
The result of that is that banks can then reduce their support costs.
Q: What SWIFT-related operations trend do you foresee for 2015?
A: We’ve seen, certainly through 2014, a much higher demand for ISO 20022 messaging.
Q: Why is there a greater acceptance of 20022?
A: ISO 20022 messages were a big step toward a more enriched message, a more fit-for-purpose message, as 20022 is really giving individual organizations the ability, for the first time, to do the further detail and context around the message.
So the greater detail surrounding any particular instrument or transaction improves the efficiency and understanding and business use of that data. You would expect to see fewer discrepancies via that message.
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