UAE Banks Federation (UBF), the sole unified voice and representative of UAE banks, together with SWIFT, held a free-of-charge webinar for all the members of UAE SWIFT Users Community, to discuss the latest update on ISO20022 adoption programme, which will go live on 19 November 2022. This will be followed by a 3-year coexistence period with legacy SWIFT MT Standards, which will end in November 2025.

Financial institutions will need to work on a complete plan for ISO-20022 adoption, including gathering of requirements, high-level design, budget, training, and a complete plan to implement the new financial messaging formats.

During the 90 minutes’ webinar, speakers covered various topics of interest and shared details of the planned tailored trainings for both technical and business teams as part of SWIFT learning center.

“We were happy with the response we received for this webinar, reflecting our UBF members' commitment. Over 175 attendees, including UBF member banks' SWIFT Administrators and Officers, SWIFT IT Technical Operation officers, Department Managers, and SWIFT Business Operation Officers, attended this webinar, which shows how important it is for us at UBF and SWIFT to share the correct information and provide the required support to the banking sector as we move towards enhancing their experience,” said Mr. Jamal Saleh, UBF Director General and Chairman of UAE’s SWIFT Users Group.

Onur Ozan, Head of Middle East, North Africa and Turkey at SWIFT, said “The payment industry’s migration to ISO 20022 is fast approaching. As the industry begins the transition to this new standard, we are starting to plan and execute on strategies to make this migration a success and enable the payments community to extract the true value that ISO 20022 can bring. Richer payment data will unlock opportunities in terms of transparency, efficiency, and also the development of new, value-added propositions for customers.”