SWIFT has announced that customers will receive an annual rebate of 10 per cent on their 2015 messaging fees, to be paid in March 2016. The rebate is worth approximately €32 million.

The rebate comes as SWIFT also announces an increase in traffic and, according to SWIFT Chairman Yawar Shah, it is a way of returning the benefits of its economies of scale. In 2015, FIN traffic rose by 8.4 per cent, with a new high of 6.1 billion messages by the end of the year. InterAct traffic also increased in 2015 by 27.3 per cent and FileAct traffic grew by 3.7 per cent.

Shah said: “This year's rebate is a reflection of SWIFT's continued commitment to the global banking community. In addition to the 10 percent rebate, SWIFT users will also realise additional cost savings over the next five years in the form of new structural price reductions.”

Francis Vanbever, CFO at SWIFT, added: “The 10 percent rebate comes on top of the 2015 discount for high volume connections, which we estimate to have totalled EUR30 million. In 2010, SWIFT set out a multi-year strategy to cut message prices in half by the end of 2015. We already reached our price reduction commitment at the end of 2014, one year ahead of schedule. By the end of 2015, the total price reduction over the 5-year period reached 57 percent.”

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CTMfile take: Despite SWIFT's stated commitment to reducing costs for the banking community, banks are not passing these savings on to their corporate clients. Some bank clients have even seen a rise in international transfer costs in the past year. This is something corporate treasury should be discussing with their banking partners.