JPMorgan Vet John Hunter Named SWIFT Chief of Americas, UK

The financial messaging services provider SWIFT has named JPMorgan Chase vet John Hunter to serve as its chief executive for its Americas and U.K. operations.

Hunter was most recently a managing director for JPMorgan Chase and “brings extensive experience in cash management, payment services and innovation fields,” SWIFT said in a news release Thursday (Sept. 2).

The Belgium-based company says Hunter’s focus will be on customer relationships across these markets, with an emphasis helping the industry create new services based on SWIFT’s infrastructure “that will enable instant and frictionless international transactions and rich data services across more than 4 billion accounts in 200 countries around the world.”

Hunter begins his role this week and brings with him extensive technology sector experience. In addition to his time with JPMorgan Chase, he has also held financial services roles at Accenture, Adobe and Hewlett-Packard.

“John’s valuable and extensive experience will reinforce our industry focus and support our customers in the Americas and the U.K. as they leverage SWIFT’s expanding capabilities to create innovative new services for the consumers and businesses they serve,” said Rosemary Stone, SWIFT’s chief business development officer.

Learn more: Big Banks Endorse SWIFT’s Global Transaction Management Platform

In July, SWIFT announced the launch of SWIFT Go, a service which transmits cross-border payments anywhere on the planet from user bank accounts. A number of global banks, handling more than 33 million cross-border transactions each year, have signed up for the service.

Read more: SWIFT Intros Fast Cross-Border Payment Service

Earlier this year, SWIFT also unveiled a new transaction management platform, which is due to launch in November 2022. Six major international banks, including Citi, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of China, have endorsed the system, which they say will allow for new services, reduce expenses and improve efficiency.

New functionalities such as central control of exceptions, upfront validation of beneficiary information, the extension of SWIFT’s high-speed GPI rails to lower-value payments and new rich information services based on the ISO 20022 standard will act as the foundation of this upgraded platform.