FOR the global custodian, keeping track of billions of dollars worth of transactions a day is an administrative nightmare.
Add to that the increasing demands from institutional clients for real-time access to data on their investments and it is easy to see the dependence of the industry on a sophisticated, integrated information technology network.
The key to the successful growth of the financial services industry, and especially so for custodians, is the common platform provided by one information technology provider.
Enter Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, a bank-owned co-operative that services more than 5,400 financial institutions in 139 countries.
In 1995, Swift carried 600 million messages, while the average daily value of payment messages is estimated at more than US$2 trillion.
For global custodians, the system has become an industry-wide standard.
Gary Wing, business manager for the Royal Bank of Canada Global Securities Services, said the system had to achieve the goals of standardisation as the industry moved to meet its aim of straight-through processing.
