SWIFT Migration Near Completion, CEO Says

Ninety-five percent of customers have made SWIFTNet migration

At the opening of Sibos 2004, SWIFT's annual conference, SWIFT CEO Leonard H. Schrank announced that 95 percent of Swift's customers representing 85 percent of the total traffic have made the migration to the IP-based SWIFTNet service.

Furthermore, overall message traffic has improved on all fronts:

Payments: up 13%
Treasury: up 15%
Securities: up 11%
Trade: up 8%

Although the figure for trade messages represents only a small percentage of total messaging, the increase does herald increasing strength in the global economy. "I can't remember - and I've been around a while - when trade's been that strong," says Schrank.

The messaging mix may look quite different in five years' time, he indicated, since initiatives to bring on board smaller financial institutions and corporate customers could increase the number of high-volume, low-value payments messages relative to the low-volume, high-value securities messages.

Based on its financial performance this year, SWIFT announced a 10 percent rebate on 2004 FIN messaging traffic, expected to total approximately EUR 33 million.