The Asian Bond Markets Initiative (ABMI) brief highlights the challenges and necessary steps for adopting ISO20022 in cross-border payments, emphasizing the transition from unstructured to structured data practices. The key inhibitors to this transition are identified as unclear purpose and misalignment of business and technology objectives, lack of common measurement and implementation frameworks, misalignment between technology investment and financial strategy, prematurely proposed regulatory mandates without market readiness and underlying practices, and standards distribution leveraging centralized governance detached from practitioner realities.
To address these inhibitors, the brief proposes several remedies: developing business narratives that quantify the value of ISO20022 adoption, establishing industry-wide measurement frameworks, structuring transition strategies that support business viability, ensuring policy readiness through a market consensus process, and taking bold steps to rebuild governance frameworks that incorporate practitioner feedback.
The brief also discusses the evolving ISO20022 ecosystem, which spans multiple business domains beyond payments, and the role of implementation bodies like the ISO Registration Authority and market practice groups in ensuring interoperability and consistent data quality. It suggests the need for an implementation-focused orchestration effort, potentially led by an interim body or a designated FMI, to bridge technology and business, public and private sectors, and standards development with market practices.
Finally, the brief concludes that successful market transition requires careful implementation design built upon practitioner insights and operational realities, with a focus on continuous improvement and phased implementation to achieve full benefits. It recommends that more diverse markets consider developing a licensing regime for cross-border payment service providers and establishing coordinated self-governance.
