PegaWorld 2025: Swift, Citi and JP Morgan discuss how to achieve the G20 goals for payments efficiency

PegaWorld 2025: How Swift, Citi, and JP Morgan Discuss How to Achieve G20 Goals for Payments

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. I know there's a lot going on at PegaWorld, so I think I can speak for us all when I say we're really grateful that you've chosen to spend your time with us today. Um, now, I might be a little biased, but I think you've made a very smart choice to see what I did there. Okay.

Very good. Um, because we're here to talk about payments. Um, and I think we can all be honest and agree that we all love payments. Right? Especially the receiving them part. Um, in recent years, we've seen some really amazing progress in how quickly money moves.

Thank you. Thank you. Um, real time payments through Venmo. Zelle. Here in the US, faster payments.

My favorite in the UK. Separate. Across Europe, they've become so seamless and integrated that we pretty much take them for granted now, I'd say. But behind the scenes of global commerce lies a less well known but absolutely critical infrastructure. And that's Swift Swift or the society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications.

I hope you wrote that down. I didn't know that handles the majority of the world's cross-border payment traffic. And that's what we're here today to explore. Cross-border payments are the lifeblood, really of the global economy, whether it's multinational corporations paying their suppliers. And we heard from Unilever yesterday, settling M&A deals, managing their liquidity or executing foreign exchange trades.

The scale, the volume, value and complexity is absolutely staggering. And the money makes the world go round, as they say. And Swift is pretty much at the heart of it all. But we're not here to talk about the smooth, happy path of payments. We're here to talk to tackle what Swift calls the last great friction in cross-border payments.

And that's exceptions and investigations, or EY, as we call it in the community. And that's those 4 to 6% of payments that go awry or need some help to complete. And while the rest of the payments landscape has evolved rapidly, Eni has remained stubbornly unchanged. It's very error prone, it's very slow, and it's still very manual. Yet, ironically, it's when things go wrong that speed, transparency and care matter most.

At Pega, we've been helping our clients solve this particular challenge for over 40 years. But this isn't a problem that any one organization can solve alone. Even if our lucky client banks can initiate an investigation in milliseconds, the process still breaks down. If other banks in the transaction life cycle are slow to respond. So that's why we need industry wide collaboration and transformation.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm thrilled to be joined today by an exceptional panel of experts is exceptional, right? Exceptions. Um, and they're from Swift. Citibank and JP Morgan.

And they're some of the most knowledgeable voices in the space. Um, and we're going to discuss what needs to change, what's coming and how we're going to solve this together. Um, I'm Ryan white. I'll change this over. Here we go.

I'm Ryan White. I have the privilege of leading Pega smart investigate solution. I've spent 25 years in this particular domain, working in several of the world's largest transaction banks in both operations and technology. And smart investigate. Like my tech wife has been with me for most of that journey.

Was unfaithful for a couple of years with Pega underwriting for insurance, but we don't talk about that. Um, and with that, let me have our esteemed panel introduce themselves, and we'll start with you, Ted. Thank you. Ryan. Good morning everyone.

I'm Ted Rothschild, J.P. Morgan. Uh, from my good karma. I coordinate the firm's, um, cooperation. Participation rather in Swift.

So kept busy with all of these topics. And if you're wondering why are we implementing ISO 222? Well, you can blame me. JPM was absolutely one of the banks that voted in favor and told Swift that we had to begin this dramatic exercise that we're in the midst of right now. Thanks very much, Ted. Good morning everyone.

It's a real pleasure to be here. Sean Monahan is my name. I'm representing Citi. I work on the Citi Service side, working in the bank for the last 20 years. And it's a real honor to be here in PegaWorld today and delighted to be part of the forum to collectively discuss how we see the, you know, the the opportunities and the potential for a landscape change, obviously, over the the next few years.

Hi everyone. Good morning. I'm Nasir Ahmed. I head up the Americas and UK region at Swift. I often joke with customers that I think we took Brexit way too literally and we kicked the UK into the Americas.

But I look after our stakeholders and our customers and all our external stakeholder management across the region. We've got 2500 odd customers and I've got two of my biggest shareholders here on the left to keep me in check for this conversation, but looking forward to it. Superb. Thank you very much, Nasir. So let's get kicked off.

We're going to start by talking about the current state and the challenges that we see within the industry. And particularly we're going to be looking at the pain points in payment exception management and the current landscape. And my first question is over to you, Nasir. So Swift research indicates that EY resolution times they remain stubbornly unchanged, about 200 hours on average to resolve despite huge improvements in the payment settlement times. So what do you see as the primary reasons for the stubborn point of friction that we're seeing there? I think before we move on to that, one of the points you made, I think it's really important for us to double down on that a little bit, which is the fact that the industry has made a lot of great strides to improve things over the last few years.

Right. So there's this narrative out there that everything is broken and that we need something completely different to fix it. But in fact, like payment speeds have been going up significantly. And actually on the Swift network, we see about 90% of transactions over the network are going from the sending bank to the final beneficiary bank within one hour, and most payments, almost all of them are being processed on average within 24 hours, end to end. So from sender to the final beneficiary.

So there's a lot of progress that's been made already. But of course there are some frictions that still remain. I think it's incumbent upon us as a community to reflect on what those are and try to resolve them. And as you mentioned earlier, it's about 3% of payments that fall into exceptions at the moment based on some of the of the research that we've done. Um, and despite all of the changes that have happened from a payment speed perspective, we're still seeing investigations take about 8 to 10 days to resolve.

Um, and that results in costs for the industry. So, uh, touching about $1 billion in costs for the industry across the board, given the liquidity pressures, the operational costs that come with it. And so why is that happening? Um, it's twofold really. Uh, one is the fact that a lot of the ini messages that happen today are free format, so there's no structure to it. About 70%, a bit more than 70% of Ini messages today are free format.

So without any structure. So where are we going to get the automation if we don't have that structure in the data that exists today. And so that that sort of impedes the the ability for the industry to automate. And it sort of introduces obstacles. The second is the lack of orchestration.

So at the moment there are multiple players in a particular transaction, and those ini messages are going from one player to the to the next and to the next. And that can be quite inefficient. And so that's leading to further friction. So I think it's incumbent upon all of us to reflect on what's causing that and then try to resolve it. And that's what we'll be speaking about later today.

Thank you very much, sir. So bringing that across to what impact that has on the banks and the bank's customers. Question for you, Sean, with investigation resolution time still around those sort of ten day, ten day period, the acquiring bank has little visibility into what's happening across the chain at the moment and when maybe even to expect a response. So from Citibank's perspective, how is that lack of transparency perhaps impacted the customer experience and their satisfaction? It can definitely have, you know, big challenges, as we've said there. The majority of payments will go frictionless, but obviously we have that small percentage then that falls in to, you know, an issue itself.

And you know what sometimes can start off as a maybe fairly what should be a fairly, you know, quick kill type query in relation to maybe, you know, confirmation of payments or beneficiary claims. Non-receipt can then, you know, evolve into a more complex case, for example, it could then turn into maybe a payment recall. And then, you know, from that point of view, there's obviously dependency on the debit authority, you know, beneficiary client to give authority to return. And then subsequently, obviously that could potentially even turn into a validate case. So sometimes they do really the cases can really evolve.

Right. And to exactly what you've said there, when you don't have that full visibility of what's happening on the back of that swift message you sent to the downstream bank, it obviously causes both challenges for ourselves, but most importantly for our customers. The customers want to know what the status is of the payments. If there's a particular action, they want to recover a payment, they want to know what's going on. So, you know, in reality, we're really focused from a city perspective of obviously keeping our client updated in relation to the progress of a file.

But there's only so many times you can actually say to a client that maybe you're you're waiting on the beneficiary bank to reply. That can just cause a bit of agitation itself, you know? So that's what we would see as some of the, you know, the big challenges today. Certainly there's been huge progress in relation to it. You know, even within our own, you know, the Pega Platform, the different automation that we've built in over the years. We really see the benefit of that.

But certainly when you don't have that visibility or a timeliness of resolution to be able to give to a client, it definitely causes some, some issues. Superb. Thanks, Sean. Um, let's get you warmed up with this one. Ted, from JPM perspective, what are the most significant pain points in the current payment exception management process that you're hoping these innovations we're talking about will improve.

Well, I'm afraid I've got to be just a little bit repetitive in some of this. Um, I'm on record. I've done a LinkedIn video a couple of months back that's gone well, if not viral, sort of, at least modestly feverish. Um, and it suggests that the correspondent banking is suffering from a perception problem at current because, as we just heard, 90% of our payments are now tracked to the credit bank in one hour. That's absolutely amazing.

But the customer experience isn't set by the hundreds, thousands of payments that go through in an hour. It's set by the handful that get stuck and get miserably stuck. So that's why we've got to focus on this as we complete and see the, I would say, the the coming together of all the work we've done moving to XML and mm based messages and also the transparency we get about the status of a payment with GPI. The two married together. This is the third piece of the triangle that just sets everything better.

And I guess I can't emphasize enough how important it will be to move away from the free format messaging. You wouldn't believe I can't quote a percentage because I'm not involved in the operation, but salient amount of time you've got to go back to the customer, sent a free format message and sort of ask what was the value date of this payment? Significant data is missing from a free format inquiry that is forced into these formatted inquiries. And then the second piece of that making it or avoiding the sequential inquiry with Swift's assistance. And we're able to figure out where is that payment stuck. You don't have to follow it through the chain.

You go right to the source. It should get a lot better with some hard work on our part. Thank you Ted. Well, this is being recorded, so hopefully it will add to your viral library. Let's see.

Um, so we're going to move into another topic area. Now talking about complement these complementary solutions and start really with, uh, Eunice here, if I may, to give an overview about Swift case management and particularly how can, um, how does the structured ISO 2022 message combined with the central case management orchestration capability? Um, how is that so transformative? So so let's take the structure first. I mean, Ted really provided a lot of that answer already in terms of the fact that there are certain elements, data elements that exist within that gene that can be structured and standardized, that will make the whole process a lot easier. So the camp 110, the camp 111 messages will come into force. Uh, and moving away from this exercise of actually putting in, uh, words formulated into a free format message, that takes time.

That is inefficient, that doesn't allow for automation. It's going to be a huge step up. So structure brings all of that efficiency and optimization to the process. And that's really why we're doing it. And I think it would be remiss for me to, to not mention the fact that we're doing an ISO migration for payments anyway.

We're going to be moving to ISO 2022 in November 2025, and we want to bring all of the processes, the ancillary processes around payments on the same format as well, right? So giving a few examples of that, having specific reason codes that you can put into a structured ISO AI message is going to make it incredibly easy for banks to be able to process that and understand where the problem resides. So structure brings that ability to bring transparency into where the issue is and to resolve it quicker. The second is around orchestration. So case will have the ability in some cases to allow, uh, institutions like yourself Pega and your solution to automate for the banks, um, certain, uh, issues and resolving those issues. Right. And so, um, orchestration brings a real benefit in the sense that instead of exchanging messages between every participant in the chain of the transaction, going to the source and doing it quickly and doing it in an automated fashion is really going to change the game. Right. So that's really where the transformation is going to come from, bringing the structure, the data that enables banks to be able to process more efficiently, optimize their processes in the back end, and then being able to orchestrate to the right agent in the transaction so that the information is received and processed more quickly. So that is really what's behind the transformative nature of what we're doing at the moment. Superb.

Thank you Nasir. And just to give you all a kind of a bit of an overview of how Pega play in this space. So I think Nasir gave a very good outline of how Swift case management really revolutionizes the structure and the routing of payment investigations between the banks. Um, but my product, smart investigate Agentic automation, or Sere, as I'm calling it. We're still looking for a pet name.

So, um, suggestions on a postcard? Um, it really transforms what happens when those investigations reach the bank. And crucially, as well as working, um, in the interbank space with Swift case environment, um, we handle the bank client and the client to bank aspect of the investigations, which sits really outside of Swift's purview. Um, but it's arguably the most important part to the actual bank. Um, for 40 years we've been the global leader in payment exception management. Our clients report anywhere up to 95% hands free processing and the processing, mind blowing volumes, some of them half a million cases a month in some instances, whilst at the same time enjoying a 50% reduction in operational staff requirements, and they're also keeping a lid on that as well.

Despite the volumes going up exponentially year on year. But today I want to talk about something that's fundamentally different, that we're doing something that I think moves us beyond the traditional automation that we've been doing over the years and moving us really into true agentic intelligence. So I just want you to picture this scenario. A customer might email the bank saying that their account position is off and they don't know what's happened. They can't reconcile, and they're wondering if maybe they've duplicated a payment.

In the traditional world, that would trigger a very manual process that could take days or even weeks to resolve. The email might sit in a relationship manager's inbox waiting to be picked up, only to then be handed off invariably to a back office function. So it's a huge lag in the process there. But with our agentic capabilities, our AI is able to understand a free format email, analyze the customer's transaction history in real time, identify maybe if there are duplicate payments, and then respond immediately with that context. But here's where it gets really powerful.

When the customer then asks, well, what can I do about it? Our genetic system doesn't just provide clear information that can be drawn from the bank's standard Operating procedures, Swift or Other scheme best practices. It can actually offer to help. And then, with the customer's consent, we're able to then trigger a return of funds workflow powered by Swift's SRP or stop and recall payment service. And if all goes well, what would have traditionally taken weeks can actually literally happen in minutes, and the funds can be returned and credited so fast the customer probably won't even expect it. So that's really the convergence of the structured messaging that Nasir was talking about.

And Sean and Ted, the orchestration, and then what we offer, then the agentic intelligence and the workflow, all the stuff you heard about in the in the keynotes today. So following I think this approach, you're not just solving today's challenges, you're actually creating tomorrow's customer experience standard. And if you think that sounds like science fiction and I acknowledge it absolutely does, I'd highly encourage you to come and visit my team and I at the Smart Investigate booth in the Innovation Hub, and I can actually demonstrate that exact scenario to you. How it works in concert with with Swift services as well. So maybe bringing those two things together and working, talking about how those solutions come together within your banks.

A question for you, Ted, from JPM perspective, how do you see these complimentary technologies addressing the pain points you particularly experience in this space? Um, I guess as we've already heard, even before we get to case, just implementing ISO and implementing GPI increases the our ability to process increases or decreases the friction in the payment systems, and it allows us to focus much more completely on the items that come up. So I think what you see is a combination here, as we've discussed almost ad nauseam, perhaps, um, the combination of eliminating the free formatting, messaging, changing the communication so that we're getting an efficient inquiry and then marrying it up with the technology that hopefully allows us to straight through process. The answer? It really will change the customer experience, take the friction out. Change that perception of correspondent banking. Superb, sir.

Thank you. I think this is a really important question I have for you, Sean. How do you balance this drive for automation with the need for human expertise in these complex investigations? So I think, like if we think about what we're focusing on at the moment and, you know, are going to be some of the initial more quicker kill case types, the likes of your creditor, claims, non-receipt, unable to apply funds, your cover non-receipt, etc.. So I think first of all, that is going to and we're working obviously very closely with yourselves in relation to that. Citi plans to be an early adopter of those initial sort of message types for some of our pilot picks by maybe the end of this year.

So certainly, I think, Ryan, that's going to give us a little bit of an indication, first of all, in relation to how the operator will experience these messages. So today, the free format, we've touched on it a number of times, the free format nature now being presented with a template which for the most part will be very systemically, obviously populated. You'll have your four letter code for the relevant case. So I think first of all, that's going to be one of the additional really important steps. And I think as we evolve then obviously, you know, bringing in the AI automation opportunities into that, you know, query type.

Certainly what that will allow then is the actual operators themselves to maybe focus on some of the more complex queries itself. And I think that is going to be powerful, both for our clients, but obviously for the operators themselves, right, that we'll be able to move away, hopefully to have ideally nearly end to end automation in some of those, you know, initial, you know, case types and certainly what's going to be key to that. And we'll touch on this as the discussion obviously further evolves is obviously what's going to get us there, you know, from a from an industry adoption, etc.. But definitely the two are going to be hand in hand. Ryan.

Definitely, from the point of view of even within the actual case flow management, you will still have the operator maybe doing an element of it, but the AI will be obviously performing some of the the actual flow and the particular in the workflow itself. So I love that, I love that. I used to love being an investigator. I used to be brilliant fun. But those trivial things, those boring things that, you know, you end up and spend time doing, those waste of time things, they're not great, but, you know, you feel like you're in some kind of CSI Miami type situation when you're doing a proper investigation.

So I think you're spot on there, Sean. Um, so moving into the I think the actual benefits of implementation of these kind of complimentary solutions, um, I'd like some real world examples. So a question for you, Ted. How do you see the combination of Swift case management and solutions like Smart investigate really improving the customer experience? Well, I guess I may have already said it. I think it really helps us separate the wheat from the chaff.

Right? If if case can already shortcut and answer some investigations and then Psia or whatever we're going to call it with a snappier name answers a couple more investigations. Really what it leaves are the challenging investigations that are fun for us bankers to have to solve, but then to also to look at and try to avoid going forward. So it should enable us to really improve the customer experience. Simple answer straight off leaving experts to delve into not just the answer of the investigation, but the root cause and elimination that should really speed things up. Yeah, massively.

Ted and Shawn. Citibank operates in over 180 countries. So how do regional differences impact your approach to payment exception management, and how might Swift case management and a solution like Smart investigate help standardize those processes for you globally? Yeah, so certainly over the last few years, Ryan, you know, we have evolved our own investigation model in the bank. So previously, the way that we were set up, it might be looking back at it now, it might have been considered a bit siloed. We would have had, you know, different reporting lines.

So the way that we have changed it from a regional perspective, different reporting lines, etc., we probably about three years ago now, we've introduced a global investigation model where basically all of our teams are everyone is, you know, on the the Pact smart investigate obviously, or the Pega smart investigator solution. Our customer service teams are on the customer service solution. So basically what that means first of all is we have obviously, from a process point of view, similar processes right across the board, irrespective of where the query type would come into from. From a regional perspective, point of view, obviously, that best knowledge and sharing of ideas and opportunities at a global level definitely really helps in that. And I think it's put us in a strong position for, you know, where we are about to evolve into the next phase.

I've been, uh, you know, for for my 20 plus years in Citi, I've always had some form of involvement on the, the investigation slash operation side. And, you know, Citi would have been, you know, one of our, the early adopters in when we look back at it, what we would have called the GCS model in 2018. Right. So this was where initially the one case type, uh, unable to apply to funds, which this was meant to be really to, you know, bring us on from a, from from a game changer point of view in relation to it at the time that was, say, an opt in service. And I think obviously what we're discussing now is obviously this is going to be a full industry change, right? Banks need to really start preparing for this.

So, you know, I think what we've done from our perspective of, you know, from an organizational structure is putting us in a sort of strong position we feel to be ready and try and lead the way for what's coming down the road over the next few years. I've got a question on adoption for you in a moment, but first, I've got a bit of a selfish question for you. So when I read the research that was recently put out from Swift, um, about this and about the benefits. Um, one of the things you talk about is being able to reduce operational costs by a very specific $332 million and liquidity costs by $270 million. So can you help explain and elaborate on how those savings are achieved? Yeah, I mean, so we basically had conversations with the pilot banks who were participating with us on the case pilot.

There's about 30 plus banks in that group. Plus, we spoke to other stakeholders of ours and tried to get a better picture of like, what kind of magnitude of problem are we looking at from a cost perspective? And what came out of that was there's about 5 to 10 manual touch points that happen during the course of every investigation. Um, there's the fact that all of that, uh, introduces a lot of time and effort, um, and introduces additional operational costs. So on average, I think we heard from some banks, it costs them between 50 to $60 per payment when doing a resolution of an exception. And in some cases, banks were quoting fees of up to a cost of up to $100 Dollars for an exception, right? So what we've looked at is how much of that friction can be removed, and what does that translate to in terms of a dollar amount.

And we were looking at around 10 to $15 being taken out of that. If we introduce things like structure and orchestration etc.. And so that's where the operational cost figure comes. But of course there's other costs that go with the inefficiency that exists today. And liquidity as a liquidity costs are a huge issue.

So like if payments are stuck for if it's taking on average 8 to 10 days to resolve a query, funds are stuck. Nothing's being done with those funds. Once you process the payment a bank has to pay usage of funds, etc. interest that goes with being able to fulfill your obligation to do payments elsewhere because you don't have the funds. So all of that combined, the operational element and the liquidity problems that exist because of the inefficiencies today brings together a figure of about $1,000,000,001.5 billion being applied to the entire industry in terms of cost because of this inefficiency, both on the operational and liquidity side.

So that's where it came from. It was a very. Tidy. Saving that for sure. Um, Ted, so JPM handles an enormous volume of global payments.

Um, what could reducing the investigation time by up to 80% for noncomplex cases mean for you? Yeah. Well, I perhaps I've beaten that perception problem to death, but that's really the key thing we're looking at first. But since we are bankers and we are beholden to our shareholders, those numbers that NAS tossed around, I think operationally those numbers might even be conservative. I think a complex investigation is going to cost us way more than $100 per looking at the number of of highly trained Banking personnel who are solving the investigation and communicating it back. So I think it's perception operational.

And then also, as you say, liquidity and all the money that is sort of stuck and frozen in an inquiry, freeing all that up and putting it back into the system. Can't quote you a number, but it's big, right? I think there were some banks who told us in total, on an annual basis, they're spending $20, $30 million on this and this could be conservative. So it's a it's a huge amount. Yeah. So moving into the I think the future outlook just to finish us off um, and looking at I think the vision for industry wide adoption.

The question for you, Sean, from your perspective, what would be um, a successful outcome for industry wide transformation of any processes? So what does it look like in, let's say, five years time? So I think what's going to be key and maybe I'll just say from the outset is, you know, we're going to need all stakeholders sort of buy in. Um, you know, so that means in relation to all of the banks really need to be. Yes. The focus currently is obviously on the payments and, you know, the evolution from MT to MW, which will hopefully successfully complete by the end of this year. I certainly feel then, Ryan, the focus will shift very quickly to the exceptions handling itself.

Right. So I think we need to we've been obviously, you know, partnering very closely with Swift. And you know, the other case, pilot banks case as part of the case expert group etc., that was set up over the last three years initially in relation to defining the problem statements, then obviously coming up with the architectural design of what these messages would look like, etc.. Right. So it's been really a privilege to be part of that group.

And I think how we evolve then further in relation to that is all of us being advocates of what's happening here, right? So that we're going out, that we're able to speak to our own clients, to speak to other. You know, banks in relation to what we envisage to be the benefits in relation to what's happening here. As I had briefly mentioned, certainly Citi planned to be an early adopter for some of the initial case types, for even some of our even for 2 or 3 branches. You know, by the end of this year. So at least then that will then allow us to go forward to be an advocate.

And even in one of the meetings with, with Swift, in one of the the workshops that that we would have had. Certainly I made it very clear that, you know, it's everyone's responsibility. It's pega.com responsibility. J.P. Morgan Citi Swift everyone's responsibility to be obviously helping others, both their own organization, but others to be ready for the change of of what's coming down the line in relation to it.

But certainly, I think, you know, if I look that few years ahead. Ryan, in relation to it. Certainly the more end to end automation in the flow, the utilization of obviously the AI capabilities that your own product will will be evolving with and has been evolving with in relation to it, certainly from an operator's point of view. Our team members that are obviously then really working on the more sort of complex type issues. But one final point that I'd say in relation to it is definitely when you look at the causes of the main causes of the friction in the payments, a lot of it is down to, you know, incomplete, invalid, maybe beneficiary details, some form of detail that in the original transaction that our customer had sent, that maybe it was not correct and that can then that's what can sometimes, you know, start the complexity.

So I definitely think that the work that we're all talking about here will cross over with the payments validation stream. So where ideally we'd like to be able to validate more payments before we send them downstream. To get confirmation that the account is open the account name number match the the beneficiary details. So definitely I think it's going to be a really exciting space. And I think when with the, you know, the combination of those points that we've discussed with there, I think it's it's definitely an exciting space to be involved in.

And as I mentioned there, once the focus goes off the payments, I think myself and Ted and all of us now, the the real industry focus will, will, will really come on the EAA space. Superb. Last question for each of you before we stop for some Q&A. So I hope you're all thinking of some questions. Um, what kind of adoption rates are you seeing? Um, for Swift case management at the moment? And what are the strategies that Swift are employing to encourage wider adoption.

So I think Sean made the point. That's a really valid point. All the capabilities that we roll out, even over and above case, require a network effect. It needs critical mass. It needs the industry to come together to implement.

So there's a lot of hard work for whatever we roll out to the community to make sure that there's that critical mass adoption. Now, there's a lot of concentration when it comes to payments around, not just a concentration of smaller concentration of banks that account for most of the payments. It's the case for any messages as well. So most of the institutions that we're engaged with at the moment, both in the pilot and the institutions that are already fully live, in case so, there's about 19 or 20 institutions that are live. There's about 30 odd institutions in the pilot group.

There's about 90 institutions that are testing at the moment. All of that combined, hopefully by the end of 2025, we expect to be in a position where banks that account for about 30% of all Eni activity at the moment, in terms of volume, will have some sort of commitment towards utilizing case, right? So that's one element. The second is the the move to the ISO structured messaging for Eni will really be a good pivot around which we can get further adoption. Right. So like, uh, next year, in 2026, uh, by November, we'll expect all institutions to be able to receive the ISO 2002 structured Eni messages.

And by 2027, um, the expectation will be that everybody's able to send as well and through the case management functionality. So, um, using that as a lever I think will be quite useful for us, uh, getting that critical mass with a smaller concentration of banks that account for a large volume of Eni payments, uh, Eni messages, but also all the work that we're doing. I've got a colleague here, Aaron, as well. Her and her team are going out having conversations with our customers. My teams in the US, in Latin America and the UK are having constant conversations with our biggest institutions to make sure this lands so that they can really understand what's the value.

Right. So there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes, but those are the few levers that we'll use to drive adoption over the next couple of years. Lovely. Thanks so much, Ted. Um, what kind of implementation challenges are you expecting and how are you addressing them? Um.

I was hoping we could bring the drum bots in to show to show this one, but they had another gig. Uh, it it it's going to take a significant effort to get there. The payback is there when we get there, though. We've got to remember, we haven't yet implemented ISO just for basic payments. We have a big deadline looming in this November.

We have another deadline looming next November to start breaking out the name and address into structured data. We have more work to do to get every payment fully transparent in GPI. Um, we have a lot of future work to do to start validating our payments, so we get this stuff straightened out and reduce the inquiries from the get go. Um, so there's a lot of work to do, a lot of technological implementation to be done just to get the baseline correct. Then there's another concern where it, it, it almost sounds pejorative, but there's this thing in the Swift world called the long tail.

Right? The banks up on the stage today, we have relatively deep pockets to invest, not only in case management, but also in the tools that we plug in to help us with the investigations. Um, helping pull this through to those tiny little banks that are often the real key point in the inquiry. Getting them fully up on these new standards and able to address the investigations in an automated fashion is going to be a big key to the breakthrough we're looking for. But we'll get there. Thanks, Ted.

Last but not least, Sean, um, just carrying on that thread from Ted there. How do you recommend your banking peers prepare, perhaps those that aren't actually really deep into this environment at the moment. So I think maybe two, three months ago. Swift issued a survey to the industry, to all banks, to 11,000 banks in relation to their awareness of what we've been discussing here, their readiness for it, and to the point that Ted has covered there. Obviously, you know, banks need to to invest.

There's a financial aspect to to this as well. But what I did find, Ryan, is on the back of the survey that you had issued, that we started getting some queries in from from our own clients, from from our some of our clients, you know, to try and understand more of what's coming down the road. For some of them, it might have been the first time we're hearing of it. So ourselves. And, you know, Ted and the team have been, you know, involved from the outset, which has been really important to us. But obviously there's a huge, obviously community out there that may have been, you know, hearing it for the first time. So I think the point is touching on what I had said earlier on. We need to advocate. So when they're coming in with the questions to ourselves explaining what's happening, what has happened today, Ryan, the background, background of why we're doing this from an industry point of view and just getting them on board comfortable. What you know, the initial plan is, um, and certainly from our perspective, as I mentioned, we want to be an early adopter of the messages and as we then go through that journey ourselves.

It's my responsibility then to be feeding that back to our own clients as well in relation to it. So I think it's a it's spreading the good word. Right. Of of all the activity that's going on, the potential benefits that that we see in relation to it. Just to point to add to that, Sean and I were talking about this before and and it really is a joint effort, right.

It's not really up to us just Swift or just the big banks to do it. I think it's a joint effort in the sense that we have to come together. We have to develop a compelling narrative that includes being able to showcase evidentially, that this thing is working well, that it's delivering benefits if we can, if that compelling narrative can include things like how this impacts positively the bottom line and ultimately the top line, that's really what's going to get people to move, right. So we have to work together. It's a joint effort.

I just want to make that point because I think it's it'll be a long journey, but it has to be done together. Otherwise we won't get there. That's not fair. I want to carry on talking to you guys. We maybe get an extra hour.

Maybe you guys don't want that, but we'll see. Um, so we'll give a little bit of time. Well, firstly, I want to thank these gentlemen. I think that was a really interesting conversation. So thank you so much.

And also thank you to you for coming to spend your time here with us today. Um, so open to the floor for some questions if anyone has any. Well, hello. Question for Nazir. So, um, you mentioned around the new, um, orchestration service at Swift.

That helps by, um, directing the query to the agent that's able to respond. Um, a common conversation we had yesterday with attendees at the Innovation Hub, um, at the smart booth was around when there's a leg of a payment that's, um, on another PMI that may or may not be tracked on the Swift network. Is there, um, is there anything that Swift can do to help there to extend the capabilities of the orchestration to, um, you know, help further reduce that friction? Actually, there's a there's a more fundamental point that you actually raise in the question, which is, uh, if I reframe the question a little bit, which is, um, what would be our level of ambition when it comes to tracking payments or legs of payments that are off the Swift network? That's absolutely something that we are focusing on at the moment, not just tracking legs of payments that are not in the Swift network, but tracking whole payments that might not exist on this or not might not permeate over the Swift network at all. Right. So we think that one of the best things that we've been able to do over the past 8 to 10 years is the development of GPI and the tracker for the industry.

Right. And so how can we use that asset and make it available for the entire industry, regardless of whether the payment exists and permeates over the Swift network or not? So we're working incredibly hard on that. So we're talking to other networks to see how we can accommodate their payments and tracking ability over the Swift tracker, but we're also talking to PMIs at the moment to see if they can do updates to the tracker themselves. There are new instant payment schemes that are being set up every day. There's about 70 odd instant payment schemes that exist globally.

We're working with quite a few of them to understand if they can help with updating the tracker as well. So our goal is absolutely where there's a leg missing, that we work with the PMI to ensure that there is trackability over the course of the chain of the transaction, but also with other networks where the payment might initiate over Swift, but actually goes off to another network or might not permeate over the Swift network at all. So we're working very hard on that, and that brings with it the other benefits of orchestration and all of that that we hope to bring to bear for the community. Yeah. I have a question.

Um, with the increasing, um, I demand for automation, automation. Um, are there any regulatory roadblocks for smart investigation systems? Because you were talking about operational overhead costs of next close to $100 per exception. And, you know, the goal of software is to reduce overhead. I was just wondering, um, could it be fully automated or does it human still need to review certain tasks or workflows? Maybe. Maybe I'm happy to to make a start in relation to that one.

So thank you very much. For that. Question. For the question. Um, so I think, you know, we've touched on the point there in relation to the solution utilizing the payments data from a GPI perspective in relation to it.

So certainly, you know, and the pilot case types that we're going to be going after, you know, the creditor claims non-receipt. So what you're what's going to happen in that particular scenario is, you know, some auto responses as we evolve into much wider industry adoption, we'll have some auto responses based on the GPI data to respond. So that's all information that would and should be available to our clients in relation to where the payment is at that that particular time. Um, you know, as we evolve then into other case types like from, you know, unable to apply and stuff like that, again, it's going to be utilizing and routing the query to the most likely party to have the answer to it based on GPI data. Um, what we had been discussing, um, in relation to the more, uh, the next set of case types, which will be OFAC and sanctions case types itself.

Um, you know, there's been lengthy, ongoing discussions in relation to it, and certainly from a regulatory point of view, maybe touching on what you're asking there is, you know, those particular case types, the flow that exists today basically will continue into the future. So what I mean by that is, you know, unlike the unable to apply scenario, that if a beneficiary bank receives a payment that they're unable to to to apply, the smart routing concept will route that query to the most, maybe the underlying, uh, you know, financial institution that had said it. So removing the correspondent bank flow in the scenario that won't happen. So what I mean by that is if you have a beneficiary bank that has received a payment that has a sanctions concern in relation to it, they won't bite. They won't raise the query by bypassing anyone in the flow.

So basically the orchestration that will happen in that scenario is it will still go through that usual correspondent bank chain. So I think that would have been one obviously area of potential concern if there was some visibility being lost in relation to maybe a sanctions related query. But I think the solution that's been, uh, that we're going to more or less go with in that particular scenario, we'll take away with it. So I think that hopefully answers a bit of the question that certainly those key case types, you know, it's all about just getting the query to the most likely party to have the answer to obviously give the quicker resolution time. Yeah, absolutely.

And don't forget, of course, that as I mentioned earlier, some of most of our clients actually have exceptionally high automation rates already today, anywhere up to 95% in some cases. Um, so I think we'll, we'll leave it there because we're out of time. But once again, thank you to these gentlemen. Thank you to you all for joining us. And hopefully I'll see you all at the smart Investigate booth.

Thank you, thank you. Thanks, everyone. We've actually got a round of applause. Just gorgeous next door. Thank you..