SWIFT opens up to new participants

Shareholders of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) have approved a new category of participants to enable financial institutions to provide messaging communications to their corporate customers within closed user groups. A vote was also passed at the annual general meeting to extend the current category for investment management institutions to include insurance companies and government institutions active in asset management.

Widespread acceptance of internet protocol (IP) technologies has opened new connectivity channels between the financial and corporate sectors. By creating a new category of corporate participants, SWIFT has enabled its FIN and SWIFTNet infrastructures to be used for the delivery of banking and financial services to corporate customers. Such services would typically include payment initiation, payment and cash balance reporting, securities transaction initiation and confirmation, portfolio reporting, as well as a range of electronic banking products and services.