A Payments Roadmap for Migrating

to ISO 20022
The path to a universal global payments clearing infrastructure
will be dened by each nancial institutions long-term
strategy across geographies and willingness to support various
communications standards.
Executive Summary
Financial messaging standards used to transmit
payment information ensure common under-
standing between senders and recipients. Unfor-
tunately, there are multiple nancial messaging
standards (such as ISO, MT, TWIST, FIX and other
proprietary and country-specic standards) that
coexist relative to geographies and functional
business areas.
Payment infrastructures around the world are
pushing for the standardization of nancial
messages using the ISO 20022
1
framework. Stan-
dardization of message formats is expected to
result in cost savings achieved through opera-
tional optimization. It is also expected to provide
a platform for further payments innovations.
One signicant development on this front is the
migration to ISO 20022 standards by the EUs
high value payment system known as TARGET2.
TARGET2 will replace all the payments-related
SWIFT MT
2
message types that it uses with their
equivalent MX
3
counterpart in November 2017.
The standard for the new MX messages will be
based on ISO 20022; usage rules will be built on
the basis of SWIFT user community consultation.
The new MX message standard will be compatible
with the legacy MT standards in order to not
impact interoperability with the other payment
infrastructures and correspondent banking.
Enrichment of the message would be carried out
after a critical mass of infrastructures and par-
ticipants have migrated to the new standard (see
Figure 1).
Other developments in favor of the migration
include:

Credit transfer/direct debit transactions within
the EU area, denominated in Euros, will be
migrated from the existing national Euro
credit transfer/direct debit schemes to the
Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA)
4
alternatives
by February 2014. SEPA is based on the ISO
20022 message standard.

Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) of Switzer-
land will move to ISO 20022 standards in 2014.

Central banks in countries such as India,
Australia and Canada have already taken the
initiative of moving to ISO 200022 standards
by abandoning their domestic standards.
Note that SWIFT has a leading role in the develop-
ment of ISO 20022. It was appointed the registra-
tion authority
5
(RA) for the standard in June 2004.

Cognizant 20-20 Insights

cognizant 20-20 insights | may 2014
2
Migration of messaging standards can result in
signicant costs for upgrading payment infra-
structure. The approach to tackle this migration
can vary from bank to bank, depending on the
institutions long-term strategy. For example,
TARGET2 has approximately
1,000 direct participants of
different sizes and business
volumes. Moreover, an approach
taken by a bank with a presence
across multiple countries will
differ from that of a bank
focused only on one country.
This white paper explains the
problems related to standard-
ization and recommends an
approach for timely and cost-
effective migration.
Payments Infrastructure:
Current State
Clearing channels throughout the world use
domestic formats for communicating nancial
information to clearing and settlement houses.
For example, FEDWIRE and CHIPS in the U.S.,
BACS and FPS of the UK and NEFT of India each
use their own domestic standards for nancial
communications.
RTGS systems such as TARGET2 (of the EU Area),
CHAPS (of the UK) and CHATS (of Hong Kong)
use SWIFT NET FINs products and services for
nancial communications.
Central banks of other countries have realized
the benets of standardization and as such are
pushing for universal migration to the ISO 20022
standard.
Advantages of standardization of message for-
mats include:

Increase straight through processing (STP)
rates for payments by eliminating multiple
message formats and using ISO 20022
extensions instead of free format texts.

Reduce IT systems maintenance costs by elimi-
nating multiple message formats.

Support innovations such as e-invoicing.

Improve integration with back-ofce systems.
Payments Infrastucture: Future State
The acceptance of ISO 20022 messaging
standards by market infrastructures (e.g., clearing
and settlement services) would follow the
traditional technology adoption lifecycle (see
Figure 2). Until the acceptance of ISO 20022
standards reaches the area between early
majority and late majority of the bell curve, the
MT standards would continue as the universally
accepted messaging standard. This suggests that
for a signicant period of time, there will be a
coexistence of MT and MX standards. The coex-
istence of MT and MX standards would mean that
there will be an immediate need for the mapping
of the message standards. Enrichment would be
carried out only after a critical mass moves to the
ISO 20022 standards.
The variant of the ISO 20022 standard that a
payment infrastructure (like TARGET2) uses can
differ from the variant used by other payment
cognizant 20-20 insights
Figure 1
First Possible
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ttthhhe NNNew
MMessage
AApprovall
ooff IISSOO 2200002222
Strategy
FFiirrsstt UUsseerr
CCCooonnnsssuuullltttaaatttiiiooonnn
SSSeeecccooonnnddd UUUssseeerrr
CCoonnssuullttaattiioonn
2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012
TARGET2s Evolutionary Path
Central banks of
other countries have
realized the benets
of standardization
and as such
are pushing for
universal migration
to the ISO 20022
standard.
cognizant 20-20 insights 3
systems (like SEPA). This would result in the
creation of numerous variants of the same ISO
20022 message format. With banks opting for a
payment hub to process payments from different
geographies, the number of message formats
that a payment engine would need to process
would rise exponentially.
A Proposed Roadmap
A payment engine that technically supports
ISO 20022 message formats has a signicant
advantage over legacy payment engines. ISO
20022 messages use XML syntax. Using XML
syntax reduces the amount of manual effort
needed to add new messages or make changes
to existing ones. In addition, its use makes the
integration with back-ofce systems easier. An
ISO 20022 message (such as for a credit transfer
message) has numerous message components
(such as debtor details, creditor details, etc.).
These message components are reused across
multiple messages. Therefore maintenance on
addition/modication of a message component
is made easier. The messages are mapped in
back ofce systems along with the message
component. Many of the components are already
known to be back ofce-related, therefore making
the integration easier.
However, migrating from a legacy payment engine
incurs a huge cost and therefore may not be the
preferred choice.
For legacy payment systems, at a high level, two
migration approaches have emerged:

Using a mapping middleware tool to map the
ISO 20022 message into an MT message format
(or even a payment-engine-specic message)
and vice versa. (The mapping rules are readily
available for interoperability between different
standards.)

Making the changes in the legacy payment
engine.
Choosing between these approaches depends
on the number of variant messages that a
payment engine would need to support. Mapping
middleware can effectively manage a high
number of variant messages. Making changes
in the legacy payment engine is preferred if the
number of messages supported is low. The cost
of migrating from a legacy payment engine to
a new payment engine can vary depending on
the approach taken by the bank. In general, a
payment engine migration program can take
around 18 months.
The number of variant messages depends on the
following:

The number of clearing channels (and/or
RTGS systems) that the payment engine
supports: The more clearing channels (and/or
RTGS systems) that a payment engine supports,
the greater the number of variant messages
that the payment engine would have to support.

The number of countries the payment engine
supports: Similar to the number of clearing
channels, the more countries a payment engine
supports, the greater the number of variant
messages that the payment engine would have
to support.
Figure 2
Innovators Lagggards
High High Propensity to Adapt Low Low Propensity to Resist
Latte
MMajooriityy
EEarlly
Majority
Earrly
Addoppterss
IT Adoption: The Traditional Bell Curve
cognizant 20-20 insights 4
Looking Ahead
Standardization of payment messages across
payment infrastructures provides a great
opportunity for reducing operational costs and
triggering the potential for innovations across
the payments space.
The use of ISO 20022 messages improves STP
rates and therefore reduces operational costs.
However, the benets of ISO 20022 can only be
realized if standards are embraced by all parties,
sans coexistence of competing standards. Coex-
istence of standards is a compromise that raises
support costs and often cannot be avoided
because regulatory guidance (such as TARGET2-
related mandates) forces banks to migrate to new
messaging protocols while maintaining existing
standards where need be. Several countries
across the world (India, Canada, Australia and
some in the EU) have already taken the initiative
of migrating to ISO 20022 standards. Others are
bound to follow.
The right migration approach for most banks
depends on their long-term strategy supporting
various clearing houses and countries. Banks
can consider the ISO 20022 standards whenever
they are making an investment in upgrading
their payments system or when the regulatory
bodies force them to migrate to the ISO 20022
standards.
Figure 3
Message Variant Matrix
Parameter
Scalable on
Clearings
Scalable on
Countries
Time to
Market
Cost
Payment engine that can process
variants of ISO 20022 payments.
Y Y Very High Very High
Legacy payment engine with a mapping
middleware.
Y Y Medium Medium
Legacy payment engine with changes
addressing ISO 20022 requirements.
N N Low Low
Footnotes
1
ISO 20022 provides a standard for nancial messaging between nancial institutions, market infrastruc-
tures and customers.
2
MT is a SWIFT proprietary message format that is exchanged over SWIFTs secure IP network that
connects nancial institutions and corporations around the world (SWIFTNET).
3
MX is an XML message exchanged over SWIFTs secure IP network that connects nancial institutions
and corporations around the world (SWIFTNET). For TARGET2, this message is based on the ISO 20022
framework.
4
The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is an initiative by ECB that will allow customers to make euro
payments throughout Europe as easily, securely and efciently as they do today within their own
countries. Once SEPA has been completed, there will no longer be any distinction between national and
cross-border euro payments: they will all be domestic.
5
RA is responsible for maintaining and publishing the central repository of ISO 20022 content and ensuring
its integrity.
About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process out-
sourcing services, dedicated to helping the worlds leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in
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About the Authors
Shrenik Shah is a Consultant within Cognizant Business Consultings Banking and Financial Services
Practice, based in the Netherlands. He has over seven years of experience working on payments projects
for banks based out of Europe. He holds a bachelors degree in engineering from Mumbai University. He
can be reached at [email protected].
Srivatsa Subbanna is a Senior Manager within Cognizant Business Consultings Banking and Financial
Services Practice, based in India. He has 10 years of experience with IT and business transformation
projects in Europe, the U.S. and Asia-Pacic. His expertise includes business analysis, process consulting
and transformation using methodologies such as Lean/Six Sigma. He holds a post-graduate diploma
in management studies from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He can be reached at
[email protected].
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