Nordea Bank has become the first subscriber to the SWIFT’s new Payments Data Quality service.
The reporting and data analytics solution is designed to help financial institutions comply with requirements stemming from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) Recommendation 16, which states that wire payment transfers must include both originator and beneficiary information.
Currently, this information is often either incomplete or missing from payments messages, making compliance a challenge for banks.
SWIFT’s Payments Data Quality service checks message using verification rules developed by SWIFT, in line with industry practice and in cooperation with the global community,
It also allows banks to consistently apply a pre-agreed set of rules based on the FATF 16 guidelines, in a bid to facilitate the development of industry standards.
The service highlights problem areas, identifying trends and providing compliance professionals with the information required to conduct investigations within their payment systems, while also offering a global overview of the quality information, analytics for identifying risk, and web-based reporting to support internal investigations.
Lene Baltzarsen, senior manager at Nordea Bank, said: “There is widespread recognition within the global banking community that not all payments messages contain adequate and complete originator and beneficiary information.”
She added: “High-quality payments data is vital to a broad range of compliance activities, including sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and the detection of data anomalies in payments messages.”
Brigitte De Wilde, head of financial crime intelligence and services at SWIFT, said: “The lack of standard practices for formatting some originator and beneficiary details in financial messages, such as addresses and bank account numbers, can make data detection by automated systems difficult.”
“It is also hard for banks with multiple platforms to maintain a global institution-wide view of payments data quality levels. Payments Data Quality is exactly the type of service that can alleviate these pressing issues, while promoting collaboration and facilitating the development of best practices and industry standards across the global banking community.”
