ISO20022 adoption and migration

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) has announced a new global standard for financial messaging for all commercial and treasury payments and balance and transaction reporting, known as ISO20022.

The adoption of ISO20022 is planned for local remittances in certain countries and regions and will take effect between March 2023 and November 2025.

SMBC Group will provide its customers with specifications for the new format as part of its ISO20022 migration strategy. The schedule and new format are being determined by the approach taken by payment scheme operators and regulators in each relevant region and country.

NEW FORMAT

The new format will comply with ISO20022 as designated by the International Organisation for Standardisation. Its adoption is being promoted globally and will include more enriched transaction information than the current format. There are an increased number of data fields, and it is necessary to provide more details of sender and beneficiary addresses such as building name, street name, town name, state, and country name. The introduction of new data components will provide more transparency and strengthen operational efficiency. For example, in funds transfer remittances the new format will allow for enhanced transaction information, such as invoice details, to be added which will assist in faster and smoother reconciliation.

Migration schedule

The adaptation of the new format in all financial institutions started in March 2023. The old format will be abolished completely and will not be accessible in November 2025. We are preparing our systems to interface with the new format, and we will announce changes to the way domestic and foreign remittances need to be submitted.

E-MONEYGER® CHANGES

Note: Due to an industry level reschedule, the changes originally announced as November 2023 have been postponed to March 2024.

Bank statement debit and credit advice

The layout of the current debit and credit advice screen has changed. This is to reflect some of the new fields in preparation for the full ISO20022 format when migration completes in the next few years. You may notice some blank fields that will gradually populate with data as the migration progresses. In addition, you can download your account statements in the new camt.053 format from E-Moneyger®.

The new ISO20022 offers more granular details on transaction types. We plan to add a new “Transaction Code” column to your Bank Statement in the upcoming March 2024 system release. 

Multi-bank statements

SMBC can now receive and display your account statements sent by other banks in the ISO20022 camt.053/052 format in our E-Moneyger® online banking platform. The existing MT940/942 format is still accepted.

Impact on inward remittance

Both the new and old formats can be used by banks in remittances between March 2023 and November 2025.  When inward remittances arrive in the new format, SMBC Group will process such instruction and deposit funds to customer accounts in the same way as today. During the co-existence of the new and old formats, if the sender inputs data that exceeds the word limit of the old format, it will automatically convert to the new one, although some data may be partially truncated. 

Impact on outward remittance

The new ISO20022 standards require a structured payee address and details of payment entry fields. By November 2025, only the structured address fields will be allowed. In addition, there are other new fields that may become mandatory depending on the payment types or market infrastructure. For example, in the UK, CHAPS plan to mandate the entry of legal entity identifier and purpose of payment in certain types of transactions from 2024.

The layout of the E-Moneyger® SEPA Single Credit, bulk, and SEPA Direct Debit transfers pages will change in March 2024. We will add the expanded 'Structured Beneficiary Address' fields to SEPA credit and bulk transfers, and structured debtor address fields to SEPA Direct Debit pages. While the Structured Address entry is optional, as part of the SEPA Rulebook change, at least one line of Address will become mandatory for the current non-Structured format. SMBC Group in EMEA plans to implement the structured addresses to all other payment types from July 2024 onwards.

SEPA Transaction Data Upload

In March 2024, we plan to start supporting the file upload in both SEPA Remittances and SEPA Direct Debit modules, where your import file contains the new structured beneficiary and/or debtor address information. The existing formats will continue to be supported. 

SEPA Direct Debit Collections:

As of today, the SEPA Direct Debit Rulebook determines that “Debtor Address” (“Debtor Address line + Debtor Country”) must be provided for all collections when either the Creditor Bank or the Debtor Bank is based in a non-EEA country or territory. 

After March 2024, per the SEPA Rulebook change, if used, the Address section must either contain as a minimum “Debtor Country + Debtor Address line”, or “Debtor Country + Debtor Town Name”.

Please note that the “Structured” address in SEPA transactions does not allow the combination of “Address line” and any other Structured address fields other than “Country”. 

SEPA Transfer Wire Payee Templates

In March 2024, we also plan to add the structured beneficiary address fields to the Payee Templates. It is recommended that you start to review your existing templates and consider the migration from the current beneficiary address entries to the new format. We will be sending out further communication regarding the effective ways to migrate your Payee Templates. 

Account statement delivery in the new format

We are now able to deliver customer account statements in the ISO20022 camt.053/052 format.

For further details on E-Moneyger® changes, please refer to:

Preparation

We recommend that our customers start preparing for ISO20022

  • Determine whether your internal payments processing systems offer ISO20022 solutions and when will they be available. These should include those provided or managed by third-party providers such as ERP and accounting
  • Prepare for providing structured name and address information of beneficiaries
  • Review your complete chain of banking relationships to verify whether they are able to process ISO20022 transactions – switch to the newest payment initiation (pain.) version and cash management (camt.) version message format if necessary
  • Consider the likelihood of payment originators sending you ISO20022 XML payments and what additional information they may include in their payment messages

FAQs

When will SMBC Group start migrating to the new format?

Adoption of ISO20022 started in March 2023 and new features will be implemented gradually in stages until November 2025. For inward remittance, the new format has been applicable since March 2023. For outward remittance, the migration timing will vary depending on the country. We will announce further information in a timely manner.

Are there any changes to the remittance fees?

There are no changes to the remittance fees as a result of the ISO20022 migration.

Besides SMBC Group, will other financial institution adopt ISO20022?

All financial institutions will migrate to the new format as ISO20022 is the common standardised format for Swift network users. The timing of migration may differ between other financial institutions.

What are the new ISO20022 file formats that E-Moneyger® will start to support?

E-Moneyger® will start to support the following file upload formats from March 2024 onwards:

  • SEPA Remittance:  pain.001.001.09
  • SEPA Direct Debit:  pain.008.001.08

Will the changes affect our payment files sent via Swift SCORE or Host-to-Host services?

  • If you are sending MT101 messages to us directly via Swift FIN, please continue to send MT101 until we receive further notification from Swift regarding the migration of MT101 messages sent within SCORE. 
  • If you are sending MT101 messages and/or pain.001 messages via Swift SCORE FileAct or the Host-to-Host service, you can continue with the current method, although we recommend that you start the preparation to migrate from MT101 to the ISO20022 pain.001 format. If you would like to upgrade the current pain.001 format to ISO20022, please contact your bank representative so that we can provide support for testing.