Swift lays out 2015 business strategy

New focus on tailored solutions for emerging markets, says Americas CEO Church

Chris Church, Swift

Messaging cooperative Swift is set to unveil details of its five-year business plan, which will be revealed at its Sibos conference this week.

The new strategy that will carry Swift until 2015 is more evolutionary than revolutionary, according to Chris Church, CEO of the Americas and global head of securities at Swift. “However, how we achieve that evolution will be through revolutionary means,” he adds.

A prime example is Swift's acquisition of SunGard's Ambit Message Hub business, which was completed last week, says Church. Swift has re-branded the business as Arkelis and plans to run it as a wholly owned subsidiary of the cooperative.

"We want to give them the ability to operate in their own entrepreneurial way and continue to thrive and be successful," says Church.

Future acquisitions may be in the cards, but first Swift needs to demonstrate to its board and to its member that it can bring on new acquisitions and successfully integrate them.

"It's a new muscle group that we haven't used before," says Church.

Other new processes also include focusing on regional needs. "In the past when we would bring things online, we would do so for everyone," explains Church. "However, some emerging markets have specific requirements and we are making sure we can accommodate them."

Church says these discussions with the emerging markets are in the early stages, since Swift only received approval for discussions in June.

As a result, the cooperative is looking on a case-by-case basis to see how it can be flexible to meet the needs of the local markets.

"This could be something like joining a number of infrastructures in a specific geography together and creating a subsidiary using some sort of franchise model," he says.

Additionally, Swift announced today, Oct. 25, that it has partnered with US-based Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC) for a pilot program to deliver XBRL-tagged corporate actions messages in the ISO 20022 format via the Swift network. The pilot program should be begin in the second quarter of 2011 and has already signed Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) as one of the first participants.

Swift officials also announced a 20 percent price reduction across the board for all of its members.

"In 2006, we said that we would reduce prices by 50 percent by 2011," says Church. "As a result of our efforts we delivered that a year ahead of schedule and when message volumes were down across the entire industry."

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