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SWIFT for Corporates |
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SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is a member-owned cooperative through which the financial world conducts its operations. Headquartered in Belgium and founded in 1973, the organization provides a proprietary communications platform and services allowing its customers to connect and exchange financial information. SWIFT is solely a “carrier of messages” and transports messages between two financial institutions; it does not hold funds nor manage accounts.
Kyriba has now expanded the bank connectivity services provided by facilitating direct corporate access to SWIFT. The ability for corporates to utilize the SWIFT network helps overcome one of the paramount challenges for effective cash management: a single mechanism promoting the efficient information flow from and to a company’s banking and financial partners. This consolidated access to vital information simplifies the operational hurdles and enables more strategic and impactful decisions faster.
Kyriba employs a proprietary Connectivity Hub that has historically offered (and continues to do so) the same value proposition that SWIFT connectivity provides: a single connection point to all of the banking partners an organization works with for balance and transaction reporting, payments (wire, ACH, direct debit, draft, etc.), and most other relevant financial information. Whereas Kyriba works with each bank’s formats around the world, SWIFT facilitates message format “standards” (known as FIN) and communicates various message “types” including customer payments, checks, financial institution transfers, foreign exchange, money markets, derivatives, securities, cash management (account balances, transactions, etc.) and several other categories. In addition, SWIFT provides the FileAct service which allows files in non-proprietary formats to be transmitted across the network (i.e. ACH, BAI, etc.). Thus, companies utilizing pre-existing file formats are not required to re-engineer their processes or expend more money.
Whether utilizing Kyriba’s Connectivity Hub, managed SWIFT connection, or a combination (for those banks not currently engaged with SWIFT), organizations can leverage a comprehensive global mechanism to link and consolidate information each determines to be “mission-critical” and central to strategic decision making for their organization. All of the data is passed through one connection point and can be imported to or exported from most any third-party application: Kyriba’s treasury management system, ERP, A/P and A/R, reconciliation, etc. Thus, true straight-through processing (“STP”) can be realized for trades and transactions resulting in significantly cleaner and efficient processes. For example, payments from an accounts payable system can be exported in a SWIFT format (FIN) or other format, perhaps NACHA (to leverage FileAct), and communicated directly to the bank. The following illustration notes the simplification and efficiency SWIFT connectivity makes possible:
Achieving visibility into specific accounts (bank accounts and balances, investment and debt positions, trading and transactional details, etc.) simultaneously increases controls throughout the organization and enables more structured and consistent workflows be established.
SWIFT employs a 24/7/365 “follow the sun” support model given the global nature of the network and the criticality of the business of its member organizations (i.e. banks). The network utilizes “PKI” or public key infrastructure where a binding is established through a registration and issuance process eliminating the possibility for credentials to be forged.
There are over 900 banks globally that currently participate in the latest corporate connectivity offered by SWIFT: Standardized Corporate Environment or “SCORE”. Kyriba manages access to SWIFT on behalf of our clients as a “Member Concentrator”, the highest and most comprehensive level of service for working with SWIFT. Kyriba owns and operates the connectivity infrastructure to SWIFT and also manages the administration (applications, onboarding, invoicing, etc.) of the SWIFT membership of our corporate client. Thus, the entire bank connection process is outsourced to Kyriba, significantly alleviating the cost, efforts, and inefficiencies companies experience when managing the bank connectivity process themselves.
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