Even early into adoption of the ISO 20022 messaging standard in its treasury services business, Louise Gorman, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co., can provide a peek into how the format can hasten payment initiation and reporting far downstream.
"We have a large brokerage client that's using the standard to draw information about payments that they have accepted from their clients who bought stock, and now want access to quick information on those purchases," Gorman said. "Our client's process of updating their system to allow its clients to see the new status of their portfolio used to take a day. Now it happens in almost real time."
In the treasury services space, JPMorgan Chase's announcement in May of the availability of ISO 20022 will not go unnoticed.
"There's been a wait-and-see approach by top U.S. banks," said Andy Schmidt, a research director with TowerGroup, an independent research unit of MasterCard Inc. One reason for this posture is the notion that ISO 20022 is an international project and not a U.S. standard, Schmidt said.
JPMorgan Chase's embrace of ISO 20022 could force the hands of other large players in the treasury services business, such as Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. "When you have a large institution that adopts the standards, from a competitive standpoint, it's going to drive the other large institutions to do the same," said Bruce Cundiff, a director of payments research and consulting for Javelin Strategy and Research.
