Westpac New Zealand selects Finastra to accelerate ISO 20022 compliance

By Leandra Monteiro

Westpac New Zealand has deployed a solution from Finastra to accelerate its compliance with the new ISO 20022 financial messaging standard.

The solution has enabled the bank to leverage benefits of ISO 20022’s data-rich MX messaging format whilst providing backward-compatibility with legacy messaging formats, without needing to upgrade its entire payments ecosystem.

ISO 20022 is a global standard for the exchange of financial messages, such as payments, and brings benefits including greater interoperability between financial systems, enhanced straight-through processing, and improved data quality. For banks and their customers, ISO 20022 provides the potential for greater efficiency and transparency, faster and more cost-effective transactions, and new services and business models such as real-time payments and enhanced fraud detection.

“With ISO 20022 set to replace the legacy MT financial messaging formats, we were eager to find a fast route to compliance and leverage the richer data offered by the new MX format, whilst ensuring continuity for existing applications,” said John Forrester, Head of Payments, Westpac New Zealand. “Finastra understands our Payments business after working with us for a number of years and was able to provide a solution that solved these challenges, without us needing to upgrade our core payments platform immediately.”

Finastra has a successful track record of implementing its ISO 20022 payments systems globally and is working closely with its customers to enable them to support cross-border and domestic real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS) in several major markets already migrating or preparing to adopt the standard.

“The move from the pervasive MT formats and other proprietary standards to ISO 20022 has the potential to provide a step-change in levels of automation, transparency, interoperability, and data insights,” said Arun Kini, Managing Director, APAC, Payments, Finastra. “Finastra’s global footprint, both in terms of customers and clearing system expertise, has enabled us to provide a solution that was quick to deploy but comprehensive in ISO 20022 processing support. We are pleased to have helped Westpac New Zealand prepare for the new standard and leverage all the potential benefits for its end customers.”