Swift members should ensure their awareness of Swift’s mandated RMA portal migration, which has a deadline for completion of March 30, 2024.
RMAs (Relationship Management Applications) are technical authorizations for business relationships between two counterparties that are validated on the Swift network.
Until now, organizations have been allowed to maintain their own relationship database, locally on their Swift server. Historically this has led to discrepancies between organizations, their counterparties, and Swift, about the most up-to-date information on RMAs, which has resulted in confusion, delays, and errors in message processing.
To overcome these issues, Swift has introduced a central RMA database, in order to maintain a single source of truth regarding RMAs for all organizations across the Swift network – this is Swift’s central RMA Portal.
As part of this mandatory migration, Swift member organizations are required to complete the following by March 30, 2024:
- Verify that all the RMAs reflected in Swift’s central RMA portal match the RMAs currently reflected in their local Swift interface. This is critical to ensure that all existing RMAs are correctly reflected in Swift’s database before decommissioning their local database.
- Enable central RMA management by activating their BIC on Swift’s central RMA portal, and disable their local RMA management. This is known as “activation”, and it must be completed carefully and correctly, as there is no returning to the local database once the central portal activation is completed.
It is crucial that organizations complete the migration ahead of the March 30th deadline, as local RMAs will not be honored after this date, which will halt critical transaction processing until the RMAs are exchanged using the Swift RMA portal.
What are the benefits of this migration?
As a result of the Swift RMA portal migration, organizations can enjoy referring to a single source of truth on their business relationships, and enjoy an elimination of the discrepancies that interfere with their financial message processing.
Any enhancements made to the RMA portal are centrally made available to the entire Swift community, eliminating the need for local upgrades to enable new features. This also serves as a single-window database for organizations’ differing systems for information on RMAs, including API and Cloud users.
What is the timeline for this migration?
As of March 2023, the central portal was made available to the Swift community.
As of October 2023, FINplus 2023 Bootstrap records were made available in the RMA portal.
As of December 2023, Swift was recommending organizations to complete a Pilot RMA portal migration to iron out the process and test for any issues before migrating their Production environment.
As of March 2024, Swift will cease support for organizations’ local RMA management, which means all Swift members must have completed the migration of their Pilot and Production environments to the Swift central RMA portal prior to this date.
How does my organization complete this migration?
If you are an existing client of Axletree or would like assistance with this migration, please reach out to us to begin your migration process as soon as possible.
Here are two ways to approach this mandatory activity:
Method 1: Self-Managed
For self-management, your organization needs to ensure all your RMAs are correctly reflected in Swift’s RMA portal before discontinuing your local RMA management, before March 30, 2024. If your organization requires some assistance with this activity, Axletree can provide consultation and training on the usage of the portal. We also provide support for the migration itself for those organizations that may require some extra assistance.
Method 2: Axletree-Managed
We can manage the RMAs on your behalf and aid your organization to complete this activity successfully. To begin this activity, we can assist you with placing an e-order with Swift to delegate RMA management to Axletree, from where we will assist you with migration completion.
The Swift RMA Portal Migration is set to streamline message flow between Swift members by relying on a single source of truth for relationship authorizations. It is imperative that organizations take steps to complete their migration ahead of March 30, 2024 in order to maintain their message flows and avoid disruptions to their business. Reach out to Axletree to plan your migration today!
January 9, 2024
