Swift Board’s Chair Retires; Deputy Takes Interim Leadership Role

The Swift board of directors that leads the financial transactions facilitator has a new chair. 

Swift Chair Yawar Shah has retired from the board after 16 years in that role. 

During the leadership transition, Deputy Chair Mark Buitenhek will cover the chair’s activities until the board elects a new chair in the coming months, Swift said in a Friday (Dec. 16) press release. 

“I would like to recognize Yawar’s many contributions to the Swift community over the years,” Swift CEO Javier Pérez-Tasso said in the release. “I look forward to working together with the board through the leadership transition as we continue to deliver on our global vision for instant and frictionless transactions with the highest standards of operational excellence.” 

Swift, which provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment, has been growing and adding services. 

Shah said in the release that during his time as chair of Swift and a representative of the United States on the Swift board, the organization continued to transform the cross-border experience for both payments and securities and maintained security, resilience and reliability. 

“Swift is in great shape with strong financials, growing traffic, industry momentum around its strategy and exciting innovation ahead,” Shah said. “At the end of a successful year and as we move to the next phase of strategic delivery it is the right time for me to retire from the role of chair and the board.” 

In one recent development, Swift said on Nov. 29 that the sign-ups for its cross-border payments service have tripled since the 2021 launch of the service. 

Swift Go, “which brings speed, transparency and certainty” to payments of less than $10,000, is now used by more than 500 banks in upwards of 120 countries. 

In other recent news, a study launched by Swift in partnership with Capgemini and central banks from France and Germany concluded that a “new CBDC [central bank digital currency] interlinking solution” can be used to facilitate CBDC cross-border payments. 

Using a technical connection between networks, Swift’s solution can interlink CBDC networks and existing payment systems for cross-border transactions, according to the study. 

PYMNTS wrote on Oct. 3 in a profile of Swift that the organization has been synonymous with cross-border payments since its founding in 1973 and is now the primary interbank messaging service for financial institutions around the globe.