The Banking and Financial Council Organizes a Workshop on the Migration to Swift ISO 20022 Standards
Yesterday, the Banking and Financial Council, in collaboration with a specialized firm, organized a workshop on the theme "Challenges and Approach of Migration to Swift ISO 20022 Standards". For those who are not familiar, this refers to the messaging system used for transactions between financial institutions.
The migration represents a real opportunity for all stakeholders to exploit enriched and structured data and improve operational efficiency through greater automation of processes. In addition to serving as a common standard, ISO 20022 enables institutions using different standards to communicate better. It can serve as a bridge between financial institutions that communicate via different data standards, resulting in accelerated payments, improved interoperability, reduced friction, and more reliable documentation.
On a global scale, this will enable Tunisia to take a significant step forward in terms of transparency. These standards enrich available data by structuring it in a more accessible way. They require countries to collect identification information from initiators and beneficiaries of national and cross-border electronic payments, providing reliable traceability. This is an important step in the fight against money laundering and other major offenses such as fraud. Errors such as misread or missing data fields will automatically trigger more reliable alerts in transaction supervision. For example, the LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) that Tunisie Clearing is assigning to companies, in addition to the ISIN (International Securities Identification Number), is one of the data elements required by the new ISO 20022 messages.
Currently, major international banks are in the process of migrating and coexisting with ISO 15022 and 20022 standards. However, after a certain deadline, which varies from one institution to another, only messages according to the new standard will be processed. The global deadline is set for November 2025. Banks that have not started yet must work day and night to update their systems, as it is far from being an easy task.