EU Banks Sceptical About 2014 Deadline
- During the SEPA-dedicated panel session at Sibos in Toronto, a small majority of the participants deemed that 2014 deadline was unrealistic. This migration end-date is mentioned in the draft Regulation currently discussed in Brussels.
- Banks will have to modify their SEPA development again to cater for new requirements set forth in the future Regulation. These strengthen the protection of SDD debtors, but should also ease the migration as it imposes the use of SWIFT ISO 20022 XML message format between bank and corporates sending their payments in batch files.
- The benefits outside of Europe of this standardisation have also been mentioned. In 2010, fifteen Southern African banks exchanged operations during a pilot project (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland).
- The adoption of the European Regulation on SEPA requirements and migration has been delayed until EU Parliament’s plenary session mid-November. This six weeks delay would prompt a unique SEPA migration end-date: 24 months after the adoption of the Regulation (as recommended by Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee’s Rapporteur), i.e. on 1st February 2014.
- This would diverge from the version adopted mid-June by the Council of Ministers, which sets two distinct migration dates (SCT: 1st February 2013; SDD: 1st February 2014). As the Council has yet to adopt this text in the same terms than the Parliament, conciliatory negotiations are being conducted until the plenary vote in Parliament, to allow for a formal approval by the Council afterwards.