Case study: Switzerland ISO 20022 modernization
Overview
Swiss financial institutions have long been at the forefront of innovation in the payments and messaging space. However, the need to modernize their fragmented and aging infrastructure to comply with ISO 20022 presented a critical challenge. To address this, three major institutions partnered with Volante Technologies, leveraging its cutting-edge solutions to streamline operations, reduce costs, and ensure compliance with evolving standards. By embracing Volante’s technology, these organizations successfully transformed their payments infrastructure, setting the stage for operational efficiency, regulatory alignment, and scalability for future initiatives.
About the clients
The institutions that partnered with Volante included a diverse set of organizations, each with unique strengths and strategic priorities:
- A global financial services provider specializing in investment banking and wealth management, serving clients across multiple markets.
- A leading domestic retail bank, ranked among Switzerland’s top five, with a strong focus on payments services for a broad customer base.
- The Swiss subsidiary of a $2 trillion global transaction bank, catering to corporate clients and facilitating high-volume, cross-border payments.
Despite their differences, all three shared a common goal: to modernize their messaging systems while preserving operational excellence and remaining competitive in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.
Challenges
These institutions managed over 60 applications with 1,000 interfaces, many of which were nearing end-of-life, creating a pressing need to simplify their systems. At the same time, they needed to comply with Switzerland’s adoption of ISO 20022, one of the first major markets to implement the standard. This regulatory push added to the growing complexity of managing diverse financial message formats and country-specific ISO 20022 variants.
The institutions also grappled with the operational challenge of streamlining and automating lifecycle processes for continuous development, testing, and deployment of messaging solutions. Their legacy systems posed another hurdle, as replacing these systems outright was not feasible. Instead, they required a solution that could integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure while meeting both internal and external deadlines.
How Volante helped
Future-ready messaging solutions
The institutions adopted Volante’s message transformation and integration components to address these challenges. This solution provided a centralized hub for all financial messaging, offering pre-built libraries for over 100 standards and 250 transformations. By leveraging this platform, the institutions gained the flexibility to adapt their legacy systems through an abstraction layer that connected older systems to modern ISO 20022-fluent environments. The platform’s self-sufficiency enabled clients to implement new standards and interfaces with minimal training, significantly accelerating their ability to respond to evolving industry needs. For instance, one client successfully migrated 600 message transformation components in less than a year.
Results achieved
The results of this collaboration were transformative. The institutions achieved an annual total cost of ownership reduction of $2.5 million by consolidating over 350 application groups and 20+ market gateways. Efficiency improved dramatically, with the time required for annual SWIFT updates dropping by 85%, from three months to just two weeks. Scalability also increased, enabling the processing of more than four million real-time messages daily. Furthermore, the institutions now possess the agility to expand into non-SWIFT standards such as SIC/EuroSIC, Fedwire, CHIPS, and CHAPS, ensuring their readiness for the evolving financial landscape.
Future innovation
Looking ahead, these institutions are well-positioned to tackle future challenges and seize new opportunities. Their Volante-enabled infrastructure will support the migration to ISO 20022 MX-based SWIFT messages, the convergence of European payment systems into ESMIG, and modernization initiatives in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. Additionally, they are prepared to adopt ISO 20022 for corporate applications in payables and receivables processing. By embracing Volante’s innovative solutions, these Swiss institutions have not only met immediate regulatory and operational demands but also built a solid foundation for future growth and innovation.
