About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Swift Provides Rules for BIC Usage and Launches Awareness Campaign

Subscribe to our newsletter

As stated during Reference Data Review’s exclusive interview with Paolo Bernini, head of information products at Swift, last week, the industry owned cooperative has published a Bank Identifier Code (BIC) policy document to detail the rules for registration and usage of the codes. Swift has also launched a new awareness and information gathering campaign to spread the knowledge about the BIC Policy and to collect additional information from the community about all registered BICs.

The BIC Policy consolidates all existing rules about BIC registration and usage in one reference document to facilitate consultation and compliance with the rules, says Swift. This and the awareness campaign are in keeping with the plans described by Bernini last week. “Our top priority at the moment is to keep the market aware of what we are doing and we hope to come to some sort of conclusion in the next three to six months with regards to progress (towards developing business entity identification standards around the BIC),” he told Reference Data Review.

Over time, institutions have registered one or more BICs for different operational or organisational purposes and from a community perspective this means that one institution is not always identified by a single identifier, according to Swift. The market has therefore asked the industry network provider to improve the identification of institutions using multiple BICs. As a result of this feedback, Swift is planning to include and publish additional attributes for every BIC record, including legal name, registered address and a unique BIC. The enriched directories will be deployed during 2010.

In the coming weeks, Swift users will receive a form with their institution’s BIC data, which they must complete with the additional information that is required. This is with a view to enriching the Swift BIC directory and will facilitate effective counterparty identification and the subsequent exposure and credit risk management. Swift is the designated ISO registration authority for BIC and the ISO standard 9362 was extended to include financial and non-financial institutions in September this year. The BIC provides an identifier for institutions within the financial services industry to facilitate automated processing of telecommunication messages in banking and related financial transaction environments.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: In data we trust – How to ensure high quality data to power AI

Artificial intelligence is increasingly powering financial institutions’ processes and workflows, encompassing all parts of the enterprise from front-office to the back-office. As organisations seek to gain a competitive edge, they are trialling the technology in variety of ways to streamline and empower multiple use cases. Some are further than others along the path to achieving...

BLOG

The Data Year Ahead: AI Reality Check and New Skills Needed

If 2024 was the year when artificial intelligence (AI) came to the fore in data management, the next 12 months could see its spread ebb as financial institutions take a reality check and slow the frenetic pace of adoption. That, at least, is one of the many predictions for the new year from of a...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit New York

The AI in Capital Markets Summit will explore current and emerging trends in AI, the potential of Generative AI and LLMs and how AI can be applied for efficiencies and business value across a number of use cases, in the front and back office of financial institutions. The agenda will explore the risks and challenges of adopting AI and the foundational technologies and data management capabilities that underpin successful deployment.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2023 – Eleventh Edition

Welcome to the eleventh edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a popular publication that covers new regulations in capital markets, tracks regulatory change, and provides advice on the data, data management and implementation requirements of more than 30 regulations across UK, European, US and Asia-Pacific capital markets. This edition of the handbook includes new...