SWIFT has completed a pilot exercise of the Electronic Bank Account Management Central Utility (E-CU) in conjunction with four banks.

It says that significant milestones were achieved to support the SWIFT EBAM product development life cycle. Additionally, concepts such as use and population of a central document database were progressed and show great promise towards the development of a full production version of the utility.

The E-CU service creates a single multi-bank platform for multi-national companies and correspondent banks to manage their bank accounts electronically, capitalising on industry standards for Electronic Bank Account Management (EBAM). Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Royal Bank of Scotland were the banks who completed the pilot with SWIFT, along with seven of their customers. In its pilot scope, it addressed two major financial industry concerns. The first is the risk of different interpretation and usage of EBAM messaging standards. The second is the challenge for the account owners to understand what information is needed for their EBAM instructions per country and per bank.

The E-CU facilitates the preparation of EBAM instructions with a database with document requirements. The database stores, per bank and per country, all the information that the account owner needs to provide, together with EBAM instructions, such as templates and country-specific requests. Once the EBAM instruction is submitted, the E-CU ensures it complies with all set rules, guidelines and requirements, even if they are country- or bank-specific. This accelerates the exchange of correct information with the aim to achieve EBAM STP. Furthermore, the E-CU offers a single platform to manage and report on accounts with all participating banks. SWIFT’s multi-bank personal digital identity solution, 3SKey, is used to secure all ECU transaction and control access to the platform.

The seven pilot corporates used FileAct and also the internet to access the central utility. Close to 100 business scenarios were completed. “The positive feedback from the E-CU pilot participants provides the foundation supporting a live E-CU,” says Carlo Palmers, corporate market solution manager, SWIFT, “This pilot project validated the original concept simplifying corporate client access to multiple banks while ensuring data integrity."

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