ISO 20022 offers financial institutions the ability to standardise their messaging to support global interoperability. As well as improving the quality and structure of financial messages, it also provides rich data with each transaction, enabling everything from enhanced analytics to status tracking, sanction checking and automated invoice reconciliation – all whilst delivering an improved experience for end customers.

However, there is concern that the deadlines required for ISO 20022 migration, being driven by regulators and global schemes such as SWIFT, are too aggressive considering the busy road maps facing banks in APAC – Real-Time, SWIFT gpi, Visa B2B Connect, enhanced fraud functionality etc. Banks also need to assign responsibility for the project and so who ultimately should be driving the ISO 20022 project – operations or IT, or both?