Financial Institution

Financial Industry especially Banking Industry, is one of the highly IT dependent industry who need a lot of standardization for data communication or reporting. Listed below seven most important standard in Banking Industry

1. UNIFI

UNIFI is the ISO 20022 UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme. It describes a model-driven process for defining electronic finance messages and provides a repository where messages defined according to the process can be registered. Most if not all of the standards bodies in the finance industry are using or planning use the UNIFI process to define standards.

2. TC68

TC68 is a technical committee within the International Standards Organization (ISO) focusing on standardization in the field of banking, securities and other financial services. WG4 focuses on the development of ISO 20022 that defines UNIFI - the UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme.

3. Industry Value Network (IVN) For Banks

In 2005, SAP was approached by a number of banks to discuss the challenges of interoperability, particularly with respect to front office business processes where internally developed applications dominate many large banking operations. An initial working group was created by SAP and a number of banks, service and technology partners that included ABN Amro, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Postbank, ING, Standard Bank and many others. The working group was challenged with defining a standard approach to enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for banking business processes. Specifically, the goal was to define services in the emerging banking application landscape such that internally developed software and commercial-off-the-software could both be leveraged by banks to deliver maximum flexibility at the lowest possible cost.

4. SWIFT

SWIFT is a co-operative established by and for the financial industry that provides secure, standardized messaging services and interface software to over 8,100 financial institutions in 208 countries and territories. SWIFT members include banks, broker-dealers and investment managers. While it is a private organization, in many ways, SWIFT is the acknowledged leader in international standards-setting for the financial industry.

ISO 20022 - UNIversal Financial Industry Message scheme (UNIFI) is the international standard that defines the ISO platform for the development of financial message standards. Its business modelling approach allows users and developers to represent financial business processes and underlying transactions in a formal but syntax-independent notation. These business transaction models are the “real” business standards. They can be converted into physical messages in the desired syntax. At the time UNIFI was developed, XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) was already the preferred syntax for e-communication. Therefore, the first edition of UNIFI proposes a standardized XML-based syntax for messages. The standard was developed within the Technical Committee TC68 – Financial Services of ISO - the International Organization for Standardization.

Mostly financial institutions that want to streamline their communication infrastructure and associated costs by opting for a single, common “language” for all financial communications, whatever the business domain, the communication network and the counterparty (other financial institutions, clients, suppliers and market infrastructures). UNIFI is targeted at these standards initiatives that are generally driven by communities of users looking for more cost-effective and XML-based communications to support specific financial business processes with a particular view of facilitating interoperability with other existing protocols (e.g., MDDL, FIXML, RIXML, XBRL, FpML, IFX, TWIST, SWIFT, RosettaNet, OAGi, ACORD, ISTH, OMG).

Here is the simple comparison between each standard

www.iso20022.org
www.mondovisione.com

Recently, one of my friend visit Hongkong for one of firm project. He feels very surprised when reading Hongkong newspaper which announcing job vacancy for IS auditor almost in 4 pages. Yes 4 pages, Hongkong which act as Financial Hub in global competition, really need a lot of IS auditor. Instead of very long working hours, of course high benefit and salary will be given there.

I'm not so expert in this matter, but do you guys has any opinion. Actually how much IS auditor demand in Financial Hub Country such as Singapore, Dubai, Hongkong, Holland, UK or US?