ISO20022: Unlocking Real Operational Value in Corporate Actions

There is little doubt that ISO20022 has the potential to transform corporate actions processing.

However, the true value of ISO20022 is often misunderstood.

The transition from ISO15022 to ISO20022 alone will not automatically eliminate issues such as non-optimal elections, operational delays or fragmented workflows.

The underlying challenge is not simply richer data.

It is operational efficiency.

Today’s corporate actions process remains heavily dependent upon timing offsets introduced by intermediaries throughout the chain. Each intermediary applies internal processing windows and operational cut-offs which gradually move decision-making further away from the market deadline.

As these offsets accumulate, the risk of sub-optimal elections increases.

This is where ISO20022 becomes genuinely transformative.

By enabling enriched structured data to flow directly between issuer, intermediary and investor through interoperable workflows, ISO20022 has the potential to accelerate processing, reduce fragmentation and improve transparency across the entire event lifecycle.

However, achieving these benefits depends heavily upon implementation discipline.

The industry has already seen examples where inconsistent application of standards has reduced interoperability and weakened the operational benefits ISO20022 was designed to deliver.

Standards therefore only realise their value when participants adhere to them consistently.

The opportunity for the market is not simply to migrate messages from one format to another, but to modernise the underlying workflows and operational models those messages support.

Source: Commentary on Capco article 'ISO 20022: Unlocking value in corporate actions'