New strategic director calls for input from the SWIFT community on SWIFT2010

Posted 6 September 2005

“We want members to give us their ideas. The discussions I’ve had with executives outside of SWIFT have been extremely enlightening. They provide an invaluable perspective on how our customers and our community see us.”

Gottfried Leibbrandt, SWIFT

Gottfried Leibbrandt, SWIFT’s new director of strategy and development is encouraging the community to provide input into the new strategic plan that will take the co-operative to the end of the decade.

Leibbrandt, who joined SWIFT two months ago after 18 years in McKinsey’s financial services practice, is spearheading the preparation of SWIFT2010, which will be presented to the SWIFT Board and community by the end of 2006. He reports to SWIFT CEO Leonard H. Schrank. “SWIFT being a co-operative, this is a very inclusive process,” says Leibbrandt. “I would like to make it as consultative as possible. We want members to give us their ideas. The discussions I’ve had with executives outside of SWIFT have been extremely enlightening. They provide an invaluable perspective on how our customers and our community see us.”

Strategic challenges

The broad outlines for SWIFT2010 have been established by the Board and the Executive and will be further honed at a December Board retreat. Three topics have been selected for particular attention: SWIFT’s role in low-value payments and SEPA; moving from messaging to messaging plus transaction management tracking; and the CIO/COO Reach programme.

As far as transaction management tracking is concerned, says Leibbrandt, “we need to understand where we can realistically add value. What are people looking for? Can we, for example, make things easier in complex areas such as reference data and dealing with the company counterpart data needed for compliance with anti-money laundering regulations.” CIO Reach, Leibbrandt says, is about really reducing operational cost across the financial enterprise as banks’ IT systems become more middleware and architecture-driven “As more of the community deploy service-oriented architecture, SWIFT must see where it can play a role in standardising some of these services,” he says.

“The real challenge is to make choices, focus, and then really decide how we’re going to make things happen,” says Leibbrandt. We are a member-driven co-operative and that means that implementation is typically a more consultative process that takes into account the entire community of users and partners.”

If members want to communicate their ideas to the Board committee finalising the strategy document, they can use any of three routes, explains Leibbrandt. They can go through the member group channels; go direct to any Board members or sponsors involved in the process; or talk to anyone else at SWIFT. “People should feel free to contact me personally at gottfried.leibbrandt@swift.com.”

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