Standard Chartered Bank conducts sessions on SWIFT formatting for its clients

Standard Chartered Bank, Financial Inst-itutions-Colombo, recently conducted a very successful interactive training session with regard to SWIFT formatting for cross border payment transactions.

The primary aim of the session was to share Standard Chartered’s knowledge and leading expertise with the bank’s clients on a very important and current topic.

This tool is a crucial adjunct to our day to day banking services, when processing international payments.

The sessions were facilitated by Shobha Nair, Director Transaction Banking – Global Clearing Support Standard Chartered Bank India, who was invited especially to conduct the program and share her expertise.  

Over 200 participants representing leading local and international banks attended the sessions, which were conducted at the Training Centre of the Bank as well as at customers’ premises.  Colin Pawley, Head of Origination and Client Coverage, commenting on the program stated: “As an international financial institution with access to cutting edge products and services, our aim is to enable our clients to more efficiently and effectively contribute as agents of economic activity.  Training sessions of this kind are just one step in that enabling process.”

Sri Lanka initiates around 670,000 SWIFT payment messages per annum, therefore correct formatting not only helps to reduce the cost of payment processing in overseas centres  but also helps timely processing on a ‘straight through’ basis.

Aruna de Silva, Head, Financial Institutions, who was instrumental in organising the sessions commented, “The training sessions were well received by all and judging from the extremely positive feedback from participants, we are confident that we are further fulfilling our role as enablers of efficient economic participants.”