Implementation of the ISO-20022-XML standard

Objective

The migration of the neu global standard for payments to ISO-20022-XML is a global program, which – regarding the exchange of payment information – requires the implementation of a unified information standard. Many payment and booking systems up to this day rely on old-fashioned information formats (MT), which will be migrated to the more data rich ISO-20022-XML standard within the next years.

The correspondent bank business will see a global SWIFT rollout from November 2022. This is – from a regulatory point of view – not a compulsory rollout, but a prerequisite for financial institutions to engage in international payment transactions in the years ahead.

Migration and coordination of all involved systems and countries required a senior project manager.

Execution

In a first step all payment and booking system, belonging to a business segment, that is affected by the migration, had to be identified. Based on that, a new data feed for all identified systems was compiled and incorporated into a global data lake, which warehouses all payment information in the new ISO-20022 compliant SDP standard (Standard Data Protocol) In a third step.

By means of several subsequent test runs, it was verified, if transactions and the underlying information about the new strategic data feed were successfully transferred in number and quality. In a final step, the transition of the data feed to production was implemented.

Result

As a result, a unified news (information) standard for an optimized communication of international financial institutions, as well as an increase in the quality of monitoring transactions via a richer data structure was achieved. Migrating to XML brings further, new opportunities along, that are predestined for data analysis in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analytics. Especially in the field of KYC (know your customer) applications or the fight against money laundering, the more extensive data base of the ISO-2022 messages is extremely useful.

Markus

AML Expert