SWIFT Names Barclay’s Dave Scola North America Head

SWIFT has announced that Dave Scola is its new head of North America.

Based in New York, Scola will be responsible for SWIFT’s innovation and growth strategy in the U.S. and Canada, working to bolster the company’s account relationships in the region.

In addition, Scola will be tasked with delivering commercial performance across the company’s products and services, focusing on SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) service and financial crime compliance portfolio.

Earlier this year, SWIFT revealed that 25 percent of its cross-border payment traffic has been sent over the gpi in the 15 months since the service was rolled out. The company added that gpi is set to be the standard for all cross-border payments made on the SWIFT network by the end of 2020, and that more than 165 banks, accounting for 80 percent of SWIFT cross-border payment traffic — and including 49 of the world’s largest 50 banks — have already signed up for the service. At the time, there had been 50 million gpi payments processed, with hundreds of thousands of payments sent each day across 350 country corridors in more than 100 different currencies.

Scola will start his new position on Oct. 1.

“With a proven track record of leadership in the Americas and Europe, Dave is ideally positioned to deliver innovation and growth in North America. We are delighted to welcome him on board as we accelerate our strategy in the region,” Javier Pérez-Tasso, chief executive, Americas & U.K. said in a press release.

Scola was previously global head of financial institutions at Barclays, leading a team of relationship managers to service banks and broker dealers across all major financial centers, and was a member of the bank’s global transaction banking (GTB) management committee. He also spent seven years at Deutsche Bank as head of their strategic development group. Earlier in his career, Scola worked in the corporate trust division at BNY Mellon.