The basic gpi tracker: take a look behind the scenes
With the 22 November deadline in sight, many banks across the globe have taken the decision to comply with the Universal Confirmation deadline through sending a simple csv file from the core bank system to the SWIFT alliance access. This light MT103 tracker is provided by SWIFT and it is free. It is intended to assist very small institutions typically dealing with very low transaction volumes. A generous gesture by SWIFT one might say. But take a closer look and see what’s happening behind the scenes.
Short-term solution
The basic tracker SWIFT provides is a valuable solution if you handle just a few payments per day. This light version of the gpi Tracker allows small institutions to confirm payments manually. It is a short-term solution designed to meet the universal confirmation business rules with the aim to bring greater transparency to SWIFT transactions. Once you start using it, you should think about taking the next step towards becoming fully gpi compliant.
Workload explosion
But that’s the tricky part. Because when is the best time to start thinking about that next step? Within a number of days, so it seems. What everyone seems to overlook is the fact that once all financial institutions are onboarded, the workload of the back- office operations will explode. Even small institutions will be faced with massive daily manual interventions to maintain their compliance level and meet the swift Universal Confirmation deadlines. And with an increase of manual interventions comes the possible increase of human errors.
Speed up and smoothen your back-end processes
I believe one should always have an eye on the original goal of the Universal Confirmations. They were meant to speed up and smoothen Straight-Through-Processing (STP) for cross-border transactions in a compliant and errorless way. So, in my opinion, using the basic tracker can only mean one thing: If you leave it at that, it will be a recipe for disaster. It will not speed up and smoothen your back-end processes, nor achieve STP-payments. It will have the reverse effect; it will slow your STP-payments down and become error prone. The only way forward therefore is to tackle the gpi compliance requirements with a robust solution. A solution that will future proof your organization. This is exactly what HRS gpi suite has been designed to do. We’ll be happy to inform you about the fastest and most cost-effective ways to achieve that.