Navigating the New Swift Landscape
Since May 2016 SWIFT users, both financial institutions and corporates, have experienced a significant spurt in activities, thanks to the planned and unplanned events that hit the community.
Starting with the introduction of SWIFT Customer Security Framework, then the rapid growth of SWIFT’s unified payment solution – the Global Payment Initiative (GPI) and the planned version 7.2 upgrade to the SWIFT interfaces, there is a lot going on in the SWIFT community. The stakeholders have to juggle all these projects along with all their other internal priorities. It is quite a challenge.
SWIFT has done an excellent job in quickly assessing the fallout of the Central Bank of Bangladesh incident and responding rapidly with the right program to ensure, the global SWIFT community is safe and protected against similar attacks. Simultaneously, SWIFT GPI has seen explosive growth and adoption by leading banks. SWIFT has announced plans to extend the benefits of GPI to the corporate treasury users who are on SWIFT. These are exciting times.
While all this is happening, the IT teams are gearing up with planning, procuring and preparing for the version 7.2 upgrade. Several have already completed the upgrades to their Test environment, leading the way ahead of the November 2018 deadline. The upgrade is not just a patch even though the path from 7.1.x to 7.2 seems to be within the same major release. There is an entirely new environment that needs to be set up. This upgrade is akin to the upgrade from pre-6.3 to 6.3 in 2007. It requires a lot more planning than an annual standards or a security patch.
Handling all the above requires expert assistance in proper planning and execution within the stipulated deadline. For those SWIFT users who are in various stages with their Customer Security Program (CSP) or interested in leveraging the GPI benefits and planning their upgrades, It is time to call in the experts!
May 1, 2018
