Banking News

ISO 20022 “Moving Target” for Nov 2022 Go Live

(4 May 2022 – Europe) What challenges must Banks overcome before the upcoming migration to the new global payment messaging standard ISO 20022 on 20 November 2022?

With under seven months to go the migration strategies proposed by major payments infrastructures and SWIFT have been a “moving target” according to Deutsche Bank’s flow. Significant alterations were announced as recently as Q1 2022.

Testing of ISO20022 payments standards should be well under way by now however many Banks have fallen behind schedule as the framework and expectations continue to alter. Deutsche Bank is planning a complete overhaul of legacy systems in preparation for ISO 20022.

With ISO 20022European high-value and cross-border payments “going live” on 20 November, major final preparations remain. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the world’s high-value payment systems, as well as SWIFT in the correspondent banking space, to implement significant changes and delays to their migration strategies. At the outset of 2022 it appeared as if the move to ISO 20022 was going to meet key milestones however more changes have thrown best laid plans into disarray.

ISO20022 is undoubtedly the commencement of a new era in the payment industry providing benefits to banks and corporates alike however the race to November launch will be highly challenging for all stakeholders.

“The changes to the timelines are impacting us quite significantly. Take the Bank of England’s (BoE) revised approach, for example. We have been very much an early adopter, making sure our understanding and technical deliveries are in place well ahead of the deadlines for market testing. This meant that when the BoE announced the changes to its timeline as well as its approach we had already spent a lot of time and effort ensuring we were ready” commented Deutsche Bank Programme Manager, Christopher Gardner.

“Our migration is not just a case of flicking a converter on and carrying on as usual. We have made significant investments into fundamentally improving our existing infrastructure, which we will then be able to leverage to incorporate further innovations in the years ahead” Gardner added.

“We started with our internal testing at the start of 2022, have just recently begun testing with a sparring partner for both the SWIFT and European migrations, and will soon move on to industry testing” said Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL) Head of Payments and Ancillary Services, Romain Reinhard.