OK, OK, I was going to stop talking about SIBOS as it’s
already history, but there was one outstanding matter, if not two.
Did I achieve the Mission Impossible, and get an update on the Investment Roadmap that would unite FIX, FpML, SWIFT, XBRL,
FISD and ISITC? and
How come I haven’t talked about the final night party?
On the first area, the answer is yes
On the second, I’m going to now.
With the Investment Roadmap, the standards organisations
announced three years ago that they were all working together in harmony to
unify standards around ISO20022. I must
admit some of us were cynical when we saw the announcement – having heard of
PORT, UNIFY and ISO150022 – but then that’s just the cynicism of age and one
should not knock the idea of try, try, try again. After all, if at first you don’t succeed …
fail again.
And that’s probably my reaction to the Investment
Roadmap. It’s not happening, or not yet
anyway.
The idea of the announcement was to formalise the agreement
of the different standards agencies to unify around ISO20022, and to ensure
that they stopped redeveloping pieces of the puzzle. In other words, the roadmap carved out the
territory for each agency, where they would specialise and how they would redevelop
their core competencies and capabilities to the ISO20022 standard.
Very good.
So what happened?
It was more difficult than they thought.
Not all the standards were developed to the same level and
some had to spend a lot more time thinking about how they could ever get to
ISO20022.
That does not mean to say it’s dead, as there have been many
informal discussions behind the scenes on a bilateral basis and this has led to
a new update that shows that the Investment Roadmap may not be succeeding but there
is still a great enthusiasm to get towards a common approach.
There is a common construct and the ISO20022 Working Group
IV have just published their results, and Working Group V are now focusing upon how to develop interoperability at
the semantic level, overcoming the issues of different syntaxes.
This is a recognition that the outcome of one single
business domain and one single syntax for all end-to-end standards is not achievable
in the short term, but achieving a consistent syntax might be.
So there you go. The Investment
Roadmap is not dead but, like a wet fish flopping around on the beach, it’s
alive but floundering a little bit. In fact, perhaps this is more Mission Impossible than we thought.
Anyways, if you’re interested, here are the eight
publications from the ISO20022 committee so far:
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ISO |
Now, on to my other statement, what happened at the SIBOS
end of show party?
Well, it was a cracker with belly dancers, whirling
dervishes and even the odd camel or two.
The only thing missing was me doing something rash, like
wearing the Anonymous mask.
No, after last year, I decided to be far more respectful and
drop the wigs, t-shirts and masks, and just wear what I would normally.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
