Swift speeds client onboarding with standards testing service
Delbaere: addressing a long-standing business challenge
Swift has announced the availability of a cloud-based application designed to eases the client onboarding process between financial institutions and their clients.
First outlined at the Sibos 2012 event in Osaka, the MyStandards Readiness Portal, is backed by some big names in the business – HSBC, Citi and Clearstream spoke at a Standards Forum session during the event, saying that it had the potential to dramatically reduce on-boarding times for new clients from months to weeks, or even days.
The principle is simple: a financial institution sets up a template of the way that it implements standards in client interfaces and processes and a potential client can simply plug in to test how compatible they are, and what needs to be changed to reach certain quality and straight-through processing rates.
In parallel, the onboarding team at the bank can monitor the client’s progress in real-time, checking for issues that can be resolved right away. These short feed-back cycles early in the process can significantly decrease project risks and overall costs, Swift says.
“The client onboarding process has been a long-standing business challenge. One significant part of the risks and costs involved is coming from the lack of standardisation and the prevalence of piece-meal solutions,” said Marc Delbaere, head of MyStandards at Swift. “Addressing this challenge with an industry-wide platform plays into Swift’s core strengths as an industry utility and fully aligns with Swift’s mission to reduce costs for the industry.”
The portal integrates with MyStandards, making it possible to test against all specifications defined in this collaborative industry platform. Launched in June 2012, MyStandards is used at 32 large global banks and market infrastructures to manage all their standards-related information.
For more information: www.swift.com/MyStandards
