The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) yesterday deployed staff to the offices of a major custodian, wrap and funds manager, as it began a so-called ‘value review’ of its SWIFTNet standards for managed fund processing.

The review aims to kickstart the moribund cause of standardisation of Australian managed fund transactions, which are still dominated by omnibus faxing and a “spaghetti” of peer-to-peer solutions between players, according to SWIFT’s commercial director, Adam Wilson. The review will calculate how long each participant is currently taking to complete the average managed fund transaction, the volume of transactions being achieved, error rates and client satisfaction levels. It will also account for the ability of each participant’s existing infrastructure to handle the new SWIFTNet standards, which include 57 new messages standardising transaction types from initial application for a managed fund to settlement. Wilson said the review would calculate the savings achievable to each organisation if they adopted the new SWIFTNet standards. All three organisations being reviewed are already on the SWIFT network, but Wilson said there were many low-cost forms of SWIFT connectivity now available, from purchase of a Microsoft Biztalk Server to a service bureau relationship, where a small funds manager can email a third party who then converts the messages into SWIFT format. The results of the review will be presented at SWIFT’s Sibos conference in Sydney, on October 10.