Over the next few years, the US Federal Reserve and The Clearing House, the Eurosystem and EBA Clearing and the Bank of England’s real-time gross settlement service will all modernise their high-value payment systems with ISO migration – bringing new data components and the possibility to transfer far richer information along the payments chain.

This not only promises greater interoperability between various settlement networks, but should mean simplified global business communication, richer information flows, higher levels of straight-through-processing and more efficient compliance processes. For some market participants, this could be used as an opportunity to reassess existing business models.

The migration to ISO 20022 has far-reaching implications for all banks, corporates and other important financial stakeholders. It is probably the most impactful payments industry undertaking since the introduction of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) more than a decade ago, and will require CEO commitment, allocation of appropriate budgets, resources and project teams given that a multitude of areas will be affected across institutions.