SWIFT of Limited Benefit to Retail Market, Says Corporate Actions Industry Report
BISS Research, a research company offering benchmarking of services and systems in the financial services sector, has published a review of the current issues affecting corporate actions globally entitled ‘The Corporate Actions 2009 Industry Report’.
The report examines all aspects of corporate actions processing and concludes that SWIFT has very little chance of becoming attractive to retail financial services firms. The report also uncovered during the annual benchmarking process a change in strategy by some software vendors, with a number diversifying their business and systems into various application service provider (ASP), outsourced and service offerings. The report concludes that there is likely to be further vendor consolidation, as some are struggling to complete sales.
Gary Wright, chief executive officer (CEO) BISS Research, said: “The Corporate Actions Industry Report is extremely comprehensive. We engaged with many of the worlds leading financial institutions to candidly assess the corporate actions market and some surprising conclusions were reached, notably extreme pessimism from the retail market and some other institutions, with SWIFT being perceived as not an attractive proposition in corporate actions processing. It looks like SWIFT has a long way to go to convince the retail market.”