SWIFT Expands Financial Crime Compliance Portfolio

In order to expand its financial crime compliance portfolio, SWIFT has rolled out its Payments Data Quality service — designed to provide advanced reporting/data analytics in order to keep financial institutions in international payments compliance.

This newly launched service will enable banks to use that reporting/analytics service to monitor their Financial Action Task Force recommendations as it relates to wire transfer regulation.

“The new requirements will pose compliance and operational challenges for financial institutions the world over. The lack of standard practices for formatting some originator and beneficiary details, such as addresses and bank account numbers, in financial messages can make data detection by automated systems difficult. Many banks maintain multiple payments platforms, making it hard to maintain a global, institution-wide overview of payments data quality levels,” a SWIFT news release about the new service reported.

What data from across the industry shows, according to SWIFT, is that there is often missing information from the originator and benefactor in the transaction, which makes it more difficult to gather data on. The Payments Data Quality service was created to review messages using quality verification rules developed by SWIFT in a way that benefits FIs.

“This is a perfect example of how SWIFT’s core strengths — collaboration, standards and the ability to provide banks with a global overview of their payments data — enable us to deliver innovative services that support the effectiveness and efficiency of our customers’ compliance programs,” said Luc Meurant, head of financial crime compliance services for SWIFT.

According to SWIFT, the new service offers:

• A global overview of quality of originator and beneficiary information in their payments messages
• Detailed analytics to help them identify potential risk related to specific countries, counterparties and branches
• Trusted reporting from SWIFT as a neutral third party to support their internal investigations and discussions with their counterparties
• A Web-based platform eliminating the need to install, integrate or maintain additional systems

“There is a growing need for improved payments data quality, particularly as it relates to financial crime compliance,” said David Howes, deputy head of financial crime compliance for Standard Chartered Bank. “We welcome the collaborative effort SWIFT is putting in place to enable the development and use of industry practice and standards to enhance data quality, transparency and compliance.”