Swift Picks JPMorgan’s Graeme Munro as New Chair

Financial messaging system Swift has chosen a new leader for its board.

Graeme Munro, a 30-year veteran of J.P. Morgan Chase, has been elected non-executive chair of the Swift board of directors, the company said in a Thursday (March 30) news release.

Meanwhile, Samantha Emery of Lloyds Banking Group has also been named to the board, with the appointments completing a transition that began when former chair Yawar Shah stepped down from his post last year.

Munro is managing director for J.P. Morgan’s corporate and investments bank, and has held senior positions in the bank’s payments and derivatives operations.

“It is an honor to be elected to serve as chair of Swift and together with the deputy chair and full board I look forward to collectively guiding its strategic evolution as a secure, resilient and innovative infrastructure supporting the global financial ecosystem,” he said in the release.

Emery is director of payments industry and development for Lloyds, and has also led payments strategy for the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Shah, himself a veteran of J.P. Morgan and current managing director for Citigroup, announced his resignation in December.

As PYMNTS noted at the time, his tenure had included a number of milestones for the organization, such as its announcement in November that sign-ups for its cross-border payments service had tripled since offering was introduced in 2021.

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

The organization also recently named Mastercard veteran Stephen Grainger to oversee its operations in the Americas and U.K.

As PYMNTS reported, Grainger had worked for Swift in a senior business development role between June 2015 and September 2018.

Based in Belgium, Swift (formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) has been synonymous with cross-border payments since it was first founded in the early 1970s, PYMNTS wrote in October in a profile of the organization.

Now, Swift serves as the chief interbank messaging service for financial institutions around the globe and works with 11,000 member institutions worldwide, while facilitating $150 trillion in transactions every year.

“All of this has been happening at a time when Swift — and the entire cross-border payments industry — has been making a steady stream of steps to keep pace with an increasingly digital world that caters to globally-minded consumers and businesses that demand cheaper and faster service,” PYMNTS wrote.