FTF News checks in with SWIFT for a quick overview of the securities-related issues that the financial messaging cooperative will cover during the conference.
The annual SIBOS conference of the SWIFT financial messaging and services cooperative, at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, will feature debates, keynote addresses, panel discussions and special interest sessions targeting many issues of concern to financial services firms engaged in post-trade securities operations.
There will be chances to dive into the latest on custodian and asset servicing, corporate actions processing, collateral management, SWIFT’s role in the Legal Entity Identifier standards initiative, SWIFT and U.S. sanctions against Russian firms, and even SWIFT’s new Know Your Customer Registry.
As SIBOS approaches, FTF News took the opportunity to check in with SWIFT and six key vendors attending SIBOS to find out what SWIFT-related areas are important to them. Their responses are available via this page.
The major trends driving demand among U.S. securities firms for SWIFT’s offerings stem from a focus on post-trade issues such as custodian and asset servicing and corporate actions processing — areas of continued message growth for the cooperative, say SWIFT officials. Recent initiatives in the collateral area especially related to DTCC’s new Margin Transit initiative are also generating some new demand for SWIFT messaging and services.
SWIFT’s role in the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) initiative is moving ahead with the wider adoption of LEI as quantified by the Global Markets Entity Identifier (GMEI) utility, a collaboration between SWIFT and the DTCC.
The GMEI utility has issued approximately 140,000 LEIs as of July, which includes 70,000 for U.S. firms, say SWIFT officials. The LEIs via the GMEI represent about 50 percent of the 280,000 LEIs issued by pre-Local Operating Units, which are the organizations that will oversee local implementation of LEIs.
SWIFT is also readying its KYC (know your customer) Registry, and has 12 pilot projects underway among US institutions. The new registry is slated to go live in September via these pilots, and to go live in December via general availability across the community of correspondent banks, SWIFT officials say.
In a related area, SWIFT’s Financial Crime Compliance suite of products and services “continues to show strong support from U.S. clients with sanctions screening showing particular relevance with a wide range of Latin American community participants,” says a SWIFT spokesperson. “The KYC registry is equally valued among Latin America and large North American correspondent banks.”
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