Corporate actions data challenge
01 Apr 2026
As the industry migrates from ISO 15022 to ISO 20022, questions remain over whether structured messaging alone can resolve the operational complexity of corporate actions processing. Zarah Choudhary examines where standards are helping — and where market practice still stands in the way
Image: https://www.assetservicingtimes.com/astimes/issue.php?issuelink=https://www.assetservicingtimes.com/astimes/ASTimes_issue_387.pdf&issue_id=439
The legacy challenge
Corporate actions processing has long been one of the most complex areas of post-trade operations.
Events such as dividends, mergers, rights issues, and tender offers must move through a chain of intermediaries that can include issuers, agents, central securities depositories, custodians, and asset managers.
With more than 60 different types of corporate actions events — many involving elections, multiple deadlines and market-specific conventions — the operational burden has historically been significant.
For much of the past two decades, the industry has relied on ISO 15022 messaging standards — including MT564 notifications, MT565 instructions and MT566 confirmations — to transmit corporate actions information across this network.
The standard helped drive early automation and straight-through processing (STP) across the securities services ecosystem. However, the format was developed at a time when the volume, speed, and complexity of corporate actions processing were very different from today.
Neil Vernon, chief product officer at Gresham, says the limitations of ISO 15022 were rooted in its underlying structure.
“The key limitation of ISO 15022 was that it didn’t provide a fully structured data model for corporate actions. Much of the critical event information was conveyed through optional qualifiers or semi-structured narrative fields rather than discrete data elements.
“That created operational complexity because firms had to translate and normalise incoming messages before they could be processed consistently across systems. Different institutions could extract slightly different interpretations of the same event depending on how their systems mapped those fields.
“As a result, corporate actions workflows became heavily reliant on vendor enrichment and internal data transformation to produce a consistent operational view of an event.”
Dimitri Sakkis, global head of operations for custody and cash clearing at CACEIS, similarly notes that ISO 15022’s flexibility could become a source of operational complexity as corporate actions grew more sophisticated.
“ISO 15022 introduced structured messaging at a given point in time, but its effectiveness was constrained by the presence of open fields and certain structured data that was not fully standardised. However, as corporate actions grew more complex, the same data field could be presented in multiple ways, limiting the standard’s consistency and usability.
“This led to increased manual intervention, higher operational risk, and reduced STP rates. The rigid structure of MT messages also made changes difficult to implement, limiting adaptability in a fast-changing environment, and complicating the management of complex corporate actions.”
Alan Lawman, product manager for TCS BaNCS corporate actions at Tata Consultancy Services, adds that the structure of the messages also created practical constraints for processing.
“The ISO 15022 messages, while useful in driving stronger conformity by industry participants, suffered from too much flexibility in how text within the messages could be presented, while also having limitations on characters within these messages — which in turn led to use of pagination when additional data and details were needed.
“This limited the scalability of the messages. Faced with industry pressure for higher automation and faster processing, questions have been raised about new requirements under MiKaDiv and Faster reporting will not be met using ISO 15022.”
Despite these limitations, ISO 15022 has played a central role in driving automation across the corporate actions ecosystem. David Baxter, managing director at T-Scape, says the standard itself was not necessarily the core problem.
“ISO 15022 has been hugely successful as a catalyst for automation in corporate actions. In our experience working with market participants across the ecosystem, the real challenge has never been the standard itself but the level of adherence and consistency with which it has been applied.
“The corporate actions process has also historically been hindered by limited issuer engagement, with event information typically originating as narrative disclosures that require manual interpretation at multiple points along the chain.”
ISO 20022 and the promise of structured data
The shift towards ISO 20022 represents the industry’s attempt to modernise financial messaging infrastructure and address many of these limitations.
Unlike ISO 15022, which relies heavily on coded fields and narrative text, ISO 20022 introduces an XML-based messaging framework with richer and more granular data elements designed to improve automation and machine readability across financial markets.
The standard has already been adopted by many financial market infrastructures and is increasingly used across payments, securities settlement, and asset servicing processes as part of broader efforts to modernise market infrastructure and enable more structured financial data exchange.
Vernon says the new format provides a significant improvement over legacy messaging structures.
“ISO 20022 is a major improvement because it introduces a far richer and more structured data model. Instead of relying on loosely defined fields, event details are represented through clearly defined data elements and relationships, which makes automated interpretation much more feasible.
“That structure significantly improves the potential for straight-through processing. Systems can validate, map and process corporate actions events with far less reliance on manual interpretation.
“However, structured messaging doesn’t eliminate complexity entirely. Corporate actions still originate from issuer announcements that can vary significantly across markets. ISO 20022 improves data transport and representation, but automation still depends on consistent capture and translation of issuer information.”
Sakkis agrees that ISO 20022 delivers improvements in both data quality and message design.
“The shift from ISO 15022 to ISO 20022 delivers significant added value, both in terms of data quality and message structure. MX formats offer far greater flexibility for evolving message formats over time.
“Every data element now has a dedicated field, ensuring major improvements in data quality and enabling consistent interpretation across all institutions processing MX messages. The better quality, standardised data naturally drives higher automation and STP rates, and allows for more effective handling of increasingly complex corporate actions.
“As technological transformations like API integration and AI accelerate, high-quality, structured data is central to the evolution of corporate actions platforms. ISO 20022 provides the foundation for this shift. For custodians like CACEIS, this aligns with a broader strategy focused on operational excellence and execution speed designed to better support our clients.”
However, adoption across the industry remains uneven.
According to Tim Lind, managing director at DTCC Data Services, ISO 20022 has yet to achieve widespread uptake across global custody networks.
“ISO 20022 has been characterised as an improvement over ISO 15022 based on its underlying semantic dictionary, support for additional data requirements, and an XML structure that supports better machine readability. While ISO 20022 has been mandated as the protocol for many market infrastructures, it has witnessed minimal adoption within global custody networks and between banks and asset managers compared to ISO 15022.
“The business case for organic adoption of ISO 20022 has not been compelling without a forced migration. Coexistence and continued support for ISO 15022 further weakens the case for adoption.”
Lawman notes that the coexistence of the two standards continues to influence adoption decisions across the industry.
“TCS provides the ability for clients to use either or both ISO 15022 or 20022, mainly because the take-up is still relatively slow, though this itself is also due to the equivalence approach that has largely mirrored the data content within each standard.
“Addressing a problem in the short term is not ensuring there is focus on long term solutions.
“The industry has started to move in breaking the long-standing agreement around co-existence and equivalence with many of the new messages developed for proxy voting and shareholder identification only being provided in ISO 20022.
“The benefit of new messages is the opportunity to design the core messages and data standards around each business purpose, without having to compromise structures due to alignment with ISO 15022.”
The vendor layer and the ‘golden copy’
Even with richer messaging standards, many institutions still rely on data vendors to interpret and normalise corporate actions information.
Vernon says vendors continue to play a central role in producing consistent data across the industry.
“ISO 20022 certainly moves the industry in the right direction, but it does not eliminate the need for data interpretation and enrichment. Vendors still play a critical role in normalising this information and producing a consistent ‘golden copy’ that market participants can rely on.
“Structured messaging helps reduce some of the technical friction in transporting the data, but it does not fully address the challenge of harmonising how events are described across markets and issuers.
“In many ways, ISO 20022 raises expectations around data quality. As firms move towards greater automation, the tolerance for inconsistent or incomplete data becomes much lower. That makes validation, enrichment, and quality control services even more important within the overall data ecosystem.”
Sakkis adds that vendors remain important for consolidating information from multiple sources.
“While ISO 20022 improves the quality of data available for golden copy creation, it does not eliminate the role of data vendors. Data received from non-vendor sources is not yet fully harmonised, and vendors continue to play a key role in comparing multiple sources to produce a reliable golden copy.
“Despite giving better data quality, disparities remain. Vendors help normalise, validate and ensure consistent interpretation of events that may be announced differently by various issuers.
“Corporate actions often involve multiple updates between announcement and settlement. Vendors consolidate these updates and track corrections or additional information throughout the lifecycle.
“Finally, the vendor role is evolving: rather than interpreting unstructured data, they now focus on consolidating, validating and enriching structured data to ensure a fully reliable golden copy.”
Lawman notes that vendor dependency is also tied to uneven adoption of the new messaging standard.
“It should have but as the adoption hasn’t been great, the reliance on ISO 15022 and the validation and scrubbing against alternative sources to ensure correct interpretation still exist. Especially around the challenges in areas like where the narrative fields are still used to cover non-standard and complex areas.
“Those markets and regions that have moved onto ISO 20022 are seeing the benefits and are relying less on vendor sources and the associated normalisation and scrubbing processes.
“They are increasingly offering an ‘issuer to investor’ approach, which increases the speed of announcement and removes the need for further review and comparison.”
APIs and the shift to real-time data
Alongside messaging standards, technology developments such as APIs and real-time data feeds are beginning to reshape how corporate actions data is distributed and consumed.
Vernon says API-based distribution can improve the timeliness of event information.
“APIs and real-time data feeds are beginning to reshape how corporate actions data is distributed and consumed. API-based delivery allows institutions to receive incremental updates as soon as information changes, improving timeliness and reducing the risk of acting on outdated event details.
“This becomes increasingly important as settlement cycles shorten and operational timelines compress. However, the value of real-time delivery ultimately depends on the quality and structure of the underlying data. APIs accelerate distribution but cannot resolve interpretation challenges alone.”
Sakkis similarly points to the growing role of real-time connectivity.
“APIs and real-time data are playing an increasingly important role, enabling a shift from periodic messaging to more dynamic, interactive and automated workflows.
“Although standards like ISO 20022 improve data and message structure, APIs add a real-time layer that further enhances operational efficiency. This also delivers value to clients by enabling direct integration of data into their systems, streamlining portfolio management and risk management and eliminating intermediate processing steps.”
Lawman says APIs are becoming an important operational tool but still require standardisation to scale effectively.
“API’s and real time feeds are becoming a critical part of the processing solution, where the option to pull data on demand in real-time from operating counterparts expedites exception resolution and improves the quality of data being provided to firms making elections.
“The primary challenge that we have seen was in the absence of any standards when these were initially introduced by firms, thereby hindering the scalability of these solutions. To overcome this challenge, TCS has partnered with SWIFT to develop a range of standard ISO 20022 API standards for corporate actions around the key use cases as a means to expanding their use and take-up.”
Technology, standards, or market practice?
While technology and messaging standards continue to evolve, many industry participants argue that the biggest barrier to automation lies elsewhere.
According to Lind, messaging improvements alone cannot address deeper structural challenges in corporate actions processing.
“Legacy applications, fragmentation in communication methods through custodian channels, and the inherent complexity of translating legal entitlements consistently into a structured message remain the root cause of manual workflows as well as a massive expense related to this process.
“Message standards have improved automation in common distribution events, but ISO 20022 does not address the root cause of inefficiency.
“30 years of market practice and harmonisation discussions have not resulted in higher rates of automation for more complex events.
“The industry needs to fundamentally rethink how to connect the workflow of corporate actions beyond fragmented financial messaging.”
Vernon says the underlying challenge ultimately lies in market practice.
“The biggest challenge today is market practice. Technology and messaging standards, like ISO 20022, provide the tools to automate and structure data, but corporate actions originate from issuer announcements that are often inconsistent and follow local market conventions.
“Variability in issuer reporting still creates friction, and until market practices align globally, automation and standards alone cannot resolve corporate actions complexity.”
Sakkis echoes this view.
“The greatest challenge in corporate actions today is not solely technological — it’s structural and multi-faceted. However, if you have to put them in order, market practices are still the primary obstacle, ahead of standardisation and technology.
“Divergent market practices across jurisdictions and participants are the main source of complexity and even with common standards, local variations persist, including differing notification timelines (record date, ex-date, instruction deadlines), distinct tax regimes, local interpretations or formatting of events, and agent or market-specific operational processes.
“A public offer or optional dividend, for example, may be structured differently in European and Asian markets, with dates communicated or adjusted according to local market infrastructures.
“This can leave a degree of interpretation or manual oversight, depending on the market. AI may eventually play a role in resolving such issues but that is a topic for another discussion.”
Lawman also points to market practice as the critical challenge.
“To a large degree, these issues are inter-dependent. We have made great advances in technology platforms and in overlaying AI and Chatbot solutions. Leading-edge platforms like TCS BaNCS are also readily accessible.
“The standards, as per SMPG for the 20022 messages, if adhered to correctly will address the processing issues that are seen today and will encourage greater STP and reduce normalisation.
“As such the biggest challenge has to be market practice, and where markets do not follow or adopt the agreed standard.
“This adds to extra work for the user and extra risk to the processing, based on a greater need for understanding and interpretation.
“There needs to be a drive to make the market practice the market ruling, should we be looking at legislating here?”
Baxter says progress will also depend on improving engagement from issuers themselves.
“ISO 20022 introduces a richer and more structured event data model, and initiatives such as the Shareholder Rights Directive are pushing structured messaging closer to the issuer source.
“However, the same issues of inconsistent implementation risk carrying through unless the industry addresses them.
“As such, and until issuers are fully engaged in releasing structured event data, vendors will continue to play an important role.
“Harmonisation efforts, including the European Commission’s recent SRD consultation and moves by European CSDs to retire ISO 15022, will be key to enabling API-driven architectures and more automated workflows.”
Corporate actions processing has long been one of the most complex areas of post-trade operations.
Events such as dividends, mergers, rights issues, and tender offers must move through a chain of intermediaries that can include issuers, agents, central securities depositories, custodians, and asset managers.
With more than 60 different types of corporate actions events — many involving elections, multiple deadlines and market-specific conventions — the operational burden has historically been significant.
For much of the past two decades, the industry has relied on ISO 15022 messaging standards — including MT564 notifications, MT565 instructions and MT566 confirmations — to transmit corporate actions information across this network.
The standard helped drive early automation and straight-through processing (STP) across the securities services ecosystem. However, the format was developed at a time when the volume, speed, and complexity of corporate actions processing were very different from today.
Neil Vernon, chief product officer at Gresham, says the limitations of ISO 15022 were rooted in its underlying structure.
“The key limitation of ISO 15022 was that it didn’t provide a fully structured data model for corporate actions. Much of the critical event information was conveyed through optional qualifiers or semi-structured narrative fields rather than discrete data elements.
“That created operational complexity because firms had to translate and normalise incoming messages before they could be processed consistently across systems. Different institutions could extract slightly different interpretations of the same event depending on how their systems mapped those fields.
“As a result, corporate actions workflows became heavily reliant on vendor enrichment and internal data transformation to produce a consistent operational view of an event.”
Dimitri Sakkis, global head of operations for custody and cash clearing at CACEIS, similarly notes that ISO 15022’s flexibility could become a source of operational complexity as corporate actions grew more sophisticated.
“ISO 15022 introduced structured messaging at a given point in time, but its effectiveness was constrained by the presence of open fields and certain structured data that was not fully standardised. However, as corporate actions grew more complex, the same data field could be presented in multiple ways, limiting the standard’s consistency and usability.
“This led to increased manual intervention, higher operational risk, and reduced STP rates. The rigid structure of MT messages also made changes difficult to implement, limiting adaptability in a fast-changing environment, and complicating the management of complex corporate actions.”
Alan Lawman, product manager for TCS BaNCS corporate actions at Tata Consultancy Services, adds that the structure of the messages also created practical constraints for processing.
“The ISO 15022 messages, while useful in driving stronger conformity by industry participants, suffered from too much flexibility in how text within the messages could be presented, while also having limitations on characters within these messages — which in turn led to use of pagination when additional data and details were needed.
“This limited the scalability of the messages. Faced with industry pressure for higher automation and faster processing, questions have been raised about new requirements under MiKaDiv and Faster reporting will not be met using ISO 15022.”
Despite these limitations, ISO 15022 has played a central role in driving automation across the corporate actions ecosystem. David Baxter, managing director at T-Scape, says the standard itself was not necessarily the core problem.
“ISO 15022 has been hugely successful as a catalyst for automation in corporate actions. In our experience working with market participants across the ecosystem, the real challenge has never been the standard itself but the level of adherence and consistency with which it has been applied.
“The corporate actions process has also historically been hindered by limited issuer engagement, with event information typically originating as narrative disclosures that require manual interpretation at multiple points along the chain.”
ISO 20022 and the promise of structured data
The shift towards ISO 20022 represents the industry’s attempt to modernise financial messaging infrastructure and address many of these limitations.
Unlike ISO 15022, which relies heavily on coded fields and narrative text, ISO 20022 introduces an XML-based messaging framework with richer and more granular data elements designed to improve automation and machine readability across financial markets.
The standard has already been adopted by many financial market infrastructures and is increasingly used across payments, securities settlement, and asset servicing processes as part of broader efforts to modernise market infrastructure and enable more structured financial data exchange.
Vernon says the new format provides a significant improvement over legacy messaging structures.
“ISO 20022 is a major improvement because it introduces a far richer and more structured data model. Instead of relying on loosely defined fields, event details are represented through clearly defined data elements and relationships, which makes automated interpretation much more feasible.
“That structure significantly improves the potential for straight-through processing. Systems can validate, map and process corporate actions events with far less reliance on manual interpretation.
“However, structured messaging doesn’t eliminate complexity entirely. Corporate actions still originate from issuer announcements that can vary significantly across markets. ISO 20022 improves data transport and representation, but automation still depends on consistent capture and translation of issuer information.”
Sakkis agrees that ISO 20022 delivers improvements in both data quality and message design.
“The shift from ISO 15022 to ISO 20022 delivers significant added value, both in terms of data quality and message structure. MX formats offer far greater flexibility for evolving message formats over time.
“Every data element now has a dedicated field, ensuring major improvements in data quality and enabling consistent interpretation across all institutions processing MX messages. The better quality, standardised data naturally drives higher automation and STP rates, and allows for more effective handling of increasingly complex corporate actions.
“As technological transformations like API integration and AI accelerate, high-quality, structured data is central to the evolution of corporate actions platforms. ISO 20022 provides the foundation for this shift. For custodians like CACEIS, this aligns with a broader strategy focused on operational excellence and execution speed designed to better support our clients.”
However, adoption across the industry remains uneven.
According to Tim Lind, managing director at DTCC Data Services, ISO 20022 has yet to achieve widespread uptake across global custody networks.
“ISO 20022 has been characterised as an improvement over ISO 15022 based on its underlying semantic dictionary, support for additional data requirements, and an XML structure that supports better machine readability. While ISO 20022 has been mandated as the protocol for many market infrastructures, it has witnessed minimal adoption within global custody networks and between banks and asset managers compared to ISO 15022.
“The business case for organic adoption of ISO 20022 has not been compelling without a forced migration. Coexistence and continued support for ISO 15022 further weakens the case for adoption.”
Lawman notes that the coexistence of the two standards continues to influence adoption decisions across the industry.
“TCS provides the ability for clients to use either or both ISO 15022 or 20022, mainly because the take-up is still relatively slow, though this itself is also due to the equivalence approach that has largely mirrored the data content within each standard.
“Addressing a problem in the short term is not ensuring there is focus on long term solutions.
“The industry has started to move in breaking the long-standing agreement around co-existence and equivalence with many of the new messages developed for proxy voting and shareholder identification only being provided in ISO 20022.
“The benefit of new messages is the opportunity to design the core messages and data standards around each business purpose, without having to compromise structures due to alignment with ISO 15022.”
The vendor layer and the ‘golden copy’
Even with richer messaging standards, many institutions still rely on data vendors to interpret and normalise corporate actions information.
Vernon says vendors continue to play a central role in producing consistent data across the industry.
“ISO 20022 certainly moves the industry in the right direction, but it does not eliminate the need for data interpretation and enrichment. Vendors still play a critical role in normalising this information and producing a consistent ‘golden copy’ that market participants can rely on.
“Structured messaging helps reduce some of the technical friction in transporting the data, but it does not fully address the challenge of harmonising how events are described across markets and issuers.
“In many ways, ISO 20022 raises expectations around data quality. As firms move towards greater automation, the tolerance for inconsistent or incomplete data becomes much lower. That makes validation, enrichment, and quality control services even more important within the overall data ecosystem.”
Sakkis adds that vendors remain important for consolidating information from multiple sources.
“While ISO 20022 improves the quality of data available for golden copy creation, it does not eliminate the role of data vendors. Data received from non-vendor sources is not yet fully harmonised, and vendors continue to play a key role in comparing multiple sources to produce a reliable golden copy.
“Despite giving better data quality, disparities remain. Vendors help normalise, validate and ensure consistent interpretation of events that may be announced differently by various issuers.
“Corporate actions often involve multiple updates between announcement and settlement. Vendors consolidate these updates and track corrections or additional information throughout the lifecycle.
“Finally, the vendor role is evolving: rather than interpreting unstructured data, they now focus on consolidating, validating and enriching structured data to ensure a fully reliable golden copy.”
Lawman notes that vendor dependency is also tied to uneven adoption of the new messaging standard.
“It should have but as the adoption hasn’t been great, the reliance on ISO 15022 and the validation and scrubbing against alternative sources to ensure correct interpretation still exist. Especially around the challenges in areas like where the narrative fields are still used to cover non-standard and complex areas.
“Those markets and regions that have moved onto ISO 20022 are seeing the benefits and are relying less on vendor sources and the associated normalisation and scrubbing processes.
“They are increasingly offering an ‘issuer to investor’ approach, which increases the speed of announcement and removes the need for further review and comparison.”
APIs and the shift to real-time data
Alongside messaging standards, technology developments such as APIs and real-time data feeds are beginning to reshape how corporate actions data is distributed and consumed.
Vernon says API-based distribution can improve the timeliness of event information.
“APIs and real-time data feeds are beginning to reshape how corporate actions data is distributed and consumed. API-based delivery allows institutions to receive incremental updates as soon as information changes, improving timeliness and reducing the risk of acting on outdated event details.
“This becomes increasingly important as settlement cycles shorten and operational timelines compress. However, the value of real-time delivery ultimately depends on the quality and structure of the underlying data. APIs accelerate distribution but cannot resolve interpretation challenges alone.”
Sakkis similarly points to the growing role of real-time connectivity.
“APIs and real-time data are playing an increasingly important role, enabling a shift from periodic messaging to more dynamic, interactive and automated workflows.
“Although standards like ISO 20022 improve data and message structure, APIs add a real-time layer that further enhances operational efficiency. This also delivers value to clients by enabling direct integration of data into their systems, streamlining portfolio management and risk management and eliminating intermediate processing steps.”
Lawman says APIs are becoming an important operational tool but still require standardisation to scale effectively.
“API’s and real time feeds are becoming a critical part of the processing solution, where the option to pull data on demand in real-time from operating counterparts expedites exception resolution and improves the quality of data being provided to firms making elections.
“The primary challenge that we have seen was in the absence of any standards when these were initially introduced by firms, thereby hindering the scalability of these solutions. To overcome this challenge, TCS has partnered with SWIFT to develop a range of standard ISO 20022 API standards for corporate actions around the key use cases as a means to expanding their use and take-up.”
Technology, standards, or market practice?
While technology and messaging standards continue to evolve, many industry participants argue that the biggest barrier to automation lies elsewhere.
According to Lind, messaging improvements alone cannot address deeper structural challenges in corporate actions processing.
“Legacy applications, fragmentation in communication methods through custodian channels, and the inherent complexity of translating legal entitlements consistently into a structured message remain the root cause of manual workflows as well as a massive expense related to this process.
“Message standards have improved automation in common distribution events, but ISO 20022 does not address the root cause of inefficiency.
“30 years of market practice and harmonisation discussions have not resulted in higher rates of automation for more complex events.
“The industry needs to fundamentally rethink how to connect the workflow of corporate actions beyond fragmented financial messaging.”
Vernon says the underlying challenge ultimately lies in market practice.
“The biggest challenge today is market practice. Technology and messaging standards, like ISO 20022, provide the tools to automate and structure data, but corporate actions originate from issuer announcements that are often inconsistent and follow local market conventions.
“Variability in issuer reporting still creates friction, and until market practices align globally, automation and standards alone cannot resolve corporate actions complexity.”
Sakkis echoes this view.
“The greatest challenge in corporate actions today is not solely technological — it’s structural and multi-faceted. However, if you have to put them in order, market practices are still the primary obstacle, ahead of standardisation and technology.
“Divergent market practices across jurisdictions and participants are the main source of complexity and even with common standards, local variations persist, including differing notification timelines (record date, ex-date, instruction deadlines), distinct tax regimes, local interpretations or formatting of events, and agent or market-specific operational processes.
“A public offer or optional dividend, for example, may be structured differently in European and Asian markets, with dates communicated or adjusted according to local market infrastructures.
“This can leave a degree of interpretation or manual oversight, depending on the market. AI may eventually play a role in resolving such issues but that is a topic for another discussion.”
Lawman also points to market practice as the critical challenge.
“To a large degree, these issues are inter-dependent. We have made great advances in technology platforms and in overlaying AI and Chatbot solutions. Leading-edge platforms like TCS BaNCS are also readily accessible.
“The standards, as per SMPG for the 20022 messages, if adhered to correctly will address the processing issues that are seen today and will encourage greater STP and reduce normalisation.
“As such the biggest challenge has to be market practice, and where markets do not follow or adopt the agreed standard.
“This adds to extra work for the user and extra risk to the processing, based on a greater need for understanding and interpretation.
“There needs to be a drive to make the market practice the market ruling, should we be looking at legislating here?”
Baxter says progress will also depend on improving engagement from issuers themselves.
“ISO 20022 introduces a richer and more structured event data model, and initiatives such as the Shareholder Rights Directive are pushing structured messaging closer to the issuer source.
“However, the same issues of inconsistent implementation risk carrying through unless the industry addresses them.
“As such, and until issuers are fully engaged in releasing structured event data, vendors will continue to play an important role.
“Harmonisation efforts, including the European Commission’s recent SRD consultation and moves by European CSDs to retire ISO 15022, will be key to enabling API-driven architectures and more automated workflows.”
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