SWIFT announced today that its Affirmations application supports compliance with EMIR by making multi-asset class electronic confirmation matching accessible to players of all sizes.

Article 11 of EMIR (in force since March this year) requires “the timely confirmation, where available, by electronic means, of the terms of the relevant OTC derivative contract”. SWIFT believe that in light of EMIR, there is a clear need to ensure all client trades are confirmed with an electronic audit trail.

SWIFT are promoting their Affirmations application, implemented in conjunction with Alliance Lite2 as an easy, low-cost, secure, cloud-based SWIFT access, provides a quick to implement solution to support EMIR compliance. Delivered via SWIFT’s Accord matching application, it gives users such as investment managers and corporates a single-screen view of the details of all their trades with all their counterparties, and enables them to accept or reject them with a simple mouse click.

By using Affirmations, SWIFT believe that “firms can reduce the time during which there is uncertainty about a trade. Faster error detection prevents delays in processing, enabling better management of exposure and reducing settlement risk. Affirmations reduces operational effort, manual intervention and risk from errors due to reliance on faxes or emails. Since Alliance Lite2 and Affirmations are operated centrally by SWIFT, no internal IT support is required, and little or no technical change is imposed on the affirming party.“

Affirmations supports multiple asset classes – FX, FX options, money market instruments and interest rate swaps.