SWIFT are evolving the rules and governance around corporate usage of their network. Corporates membership of SWIFT has grown as SWIFT have SLOWLY relaxed their rules:

• in 1999: corporates were formally allowed on the SWIFT network when they were allowed to join SWIFT for FX confirmations, but sending or receiving payment messages were not available
• in 2001 the Member Administrated Closed User Groups (MA-CUG). With MA-CUG, the service expanded beyond FX confirmations to allow corporates to exchange all message types - including payment messages - to their member banks within a closed user group operated by each individual bank. But corporates had to join several MA-CUGs
• in 2006, the SCORE (Standardised Corporate Environment) framework was launched, SCORE established a single closed user group for all member banks and corporates to exchange payments messages over SWIFT. But the criteria for corporates to join SCORE were more rigorous than the existing membership criteria for MA-CUGs: Corporates had to be listed on a regulated stock exchange in a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) country in order to participate.
• in 2009, SCORE eligibility was subsequently extended to allow all corporates to join (even non-listed corporates) so long as they were recommended by financial institutions.

In June 2016 the SWIFT AGM approved any SWIFT  “Supervised Financial Institution” can join SCORE and offer messaging services to their corporate customers over SWIFT, while the eligibility of corporates to join SWIFT remains unchanged. 

Impact of extended eligibility

The smaller regional and local banks, who are often not shareholding members of SWIFT, can now offer their services to corporates without a need to become a SWIFT shareholder. Furthermore, corporates will be able to exchange messages with additional counterparties such as insurance companies and trade repositories which previously were not allowed to join the SCORE service. Corporates will now have the opportunity to request from more than 10,000 connected Supervised Financial Institutions to use SWIFT as their single multi-bank network to exchange financial messaging globally.

Corporate membership growth continues

56 new corporate groups joined SWIFT in the first quarter of 2016, an 8% increase compared to the same period in 2015. 35 new corporate groups also opted for ISO 20022 formatted messages, representing 44% among all connected corporates. Six new banking groups have been certified in the Bank Readiness Certification Programme to offer SWIFT services to more corporates around the world

Traffic growth continued across all message types, with 22% increase on FIN traffic, 25% increase on FileAct, and 34.5% increase on ISO 20022 formatted messages.