Only 39 percent of banks can confirm payments by nostro service providers in real time, according to a survey conducted by SWIFT.
Real-time nostro payments are considered a critical step towards banks meeting intraday liquidity monitoring rules set out by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in April 2013.
Banks are expected to start using monitoring tools in January 2015, but only 68 percent of respondents said they have started working on the project.
Of these, 31 percent are at implementation stage, 37 percent have started an evaluation of their readiness, and 32 percent still do not have any process in place.
Catherine Banneux, senior market manager at SWIFT, said: “The industry is moving in the right direction, but with a large number of banks still evaluating or without a plan for their BCBS liquidity monitoring project, there is a lot more progress to be made."
"SWIFT can help banks with these projects by providing a set of pragmatic solutions that leverage existing infrastructures and data formats.”
SWIFT surveyed 150 industry professionals to evaluate the implementation status of BCBS monitoring tools for intraday liquidity at financial institutions. It was also used to assess market views on solutions for driving down costs.
The survey found that, in many countries, tools have not yet been translated in to detailed requirements, which could steer the industry towards a short-term, pragmatic approach.
In addition, 74 percent of banks said that, in the first instance, they will use the credit and debit confirmations to uild liquidity monitoring tools, and 42 percent said they do not have a global view of intraday liquidity usage for nostro accounts.
Most respondents called for a collaborative approach, with 89 percent agreeing that this could reduce overall implementations costs and speed up resolution of any issues.
