Swift, the financial messaging provider for more than 9,700 financial institutions and corporations in 209 countries, has selected Sword FircoSoft to provide components of its new centralised Sanctions Screening service.
Economic sanctions are growing in importance as a tool to fight financial crime. As a consequence, complying with evolving sanctions regulations and frequently updated lists has become more complex, costly and time-consuming for financial institutions.
Sanctions Screening over Swift will combine Sword FircoSoft’s market-leading filtering application and list update service with the security and resilience of Swift, to provide a comprehensive and centralised screening service for small- and medium-sized financial institutions in need of a quick, easy and cost-effective route to compliance with sanctions regulation.
Users of the new Sanctions Screening service will be able to request selected Swift FIN messages be routed to the centralised screening application, where they will be filtered in real time, and checked against customers’ selected sanctions lists. If there is no match to the sanctions list, the message will be delivered as usual. If there is a match, customers will be asked to instruct Swift as to whether to release, abort or flag the message via an alert management system.
Swift selected Sword FircoSoft to provide the underlying components of Sanctions Screening over Swift following a competitive selection process. The new service is scheduled to go live in late 2011.
Gottfried Leibbrandt, head of marketing, Swift, says: “Sanctions Screening over Swift is an important element of our strategic drive to reduce costs for our customers. The combination of Swift’s security, resilience and reach among the financial institutions that need to comply with sanctions regulations and Sword FircoSoft’s provision of market-leading filtering and list service solutions will deliver the best possible value to our customers.”
Jean Losco, CEO, FircoSoft, adds: “We are delighted to have been selected by Swift to provide our technology and lists as a key component of their Sanctions Screening solution. This is in total alignment with our strategy to standardise transactions filtering and bring the utmost level of protection to the financial market.”
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