ISO 20022 migration: Time to move from awareness to action, says new Deutsche Bank paper

Deutsche Bank has released a new white paper, The “Guide to ISO 20022 migration, Part 2”, providing a comprehensive update on the global migration to the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard. Despite coming just four months after the release of Part 1, the paper highlights how the industry has made a number of significant steps in this time, including the release of several detailed usage guidelines, such as SWIFT’s Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) for cross-border payments, and updated User Detailed Functional Specifications (UDFS) for the Eurosystem.

The paper also explores the implications for all market participants, laying out options and guidance for each of the different types of market participant, including global banks, regional banks (Eurozone), regional banks (non-Eurozone) and corporates.

This last group is perhaps the most likely to overlook the implications. Part 1 of the guide emphasised that banks should not consider the migration to ISO 20022 as just “another IT project”, but it’s equally important that corporates do not make the similar mistake of writing the migration off as just “another bank project”.

“While ISO 20022 first and foremost affects bank’s payment chains and operational workflows, the impact for large corporates and multinationals will be significant, especially for those with in-house bank or payment factory set-ups,” says Christian Westerhaus, Head of Cash Products, Cash Management, Deutsche Bank.

For those preparing for the transition, the paper notes a number of new tools being developed by SWIFT that can help smooth the process. These include a translation sandbox to convert outgoing FIN messages into the ISO 20222 format and a separate service for converting incoming MX messages.