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AEG NewsletterThird Quarter - 2020 | Issue #11 |
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“Despite all, we maintain our resilience and unwavering determination”
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Word from the CEO
As for coping with the pandemic, we are still working, as promised, in face of all the imposed limitations, taking all measures in order to go unaffected and conduct our business as normal as possible in the quest of serving the best to our clients. We are on time with mandated updates, upgrades and security controls from SWIFT. We are signing big projects offering inhouse developed applications, especially in KSA, Jordan, Egypt and Africa. Despite all, we maintain our resilience and unwavering determination to keep on doing what we do and to offer our best against all odds. Dr. Mohamed Sadek – CEO and General Manager Universal Payment Confirmation Starting 22 November 2020, SWIFT mandates FIN users to confirm to the Tracker when a payment (MT 103) has been credited to the account of the beneficiary, placed on hold or transferred outside of SWIFT within a maximum of two business days following the value date in the MT 103. AEG Universal Payment Confirmation (AEG-UPC), an inhouse application, automates the process of sending confirmations to the Tracker on the payment status in compliance with SWIFT requirements. AEG-UPC is already an integrated module in AEG gpi-PRO application if the bank is a gpi member. However, if the bank is not a gpi member, AEG-UPC can work as a stand-alone application to perform the confirmations to the Tracker automatically. Although the deadline is very close, AEG is ready to offer, implement and support its clients and potential clients on this application. For more information, contact your account manager here AEG MT-ISO Converter All financial institutions processing SWIFT MT Category 1, 2 and 9 series messages must be able to receive and process Cross-border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) compliant ISO 20022 messages. Optionally, financial institutions with significant intermediary business, where compliance is required, should also be able to send CBPR+ compliant ISO 20022 messages based on received ISO 20022 payments. Conformance to CBPR+ specifications will be validated by the SWIFT messaging service, so it is imperative that bank implements the specifications correctly.
AEG MT-ISO Converter with its advanced and robust features plays an important role in adopting the ISO20022 migration by anticipating their business requirements and complying with CBPR+ defined rules and standards. This also helps the bank to focus on a single point of implementing the ISO20022 instead of making the changes on all the back-end applications. For more information, contact your account manager here The COVID-19 Experience
The persistence of the pandemic over several months with no clear foresight of when it is going to end made us adapt much quicker to the new facts and force solid measures in order to keep our business up and running. Due to the regular enhancements of our Business Continuity Plan, our teams were already trained and prepared for certain limitations that they were faced with. However, the elongated period has brought about some challenges that could not be avoided, but again, we have been dealing with them in the sense that kept the functionality as high as possible within the circumstances. First, there were some complications arising from the logistic issues due to lockdown and curfew imposed by governments at the countries of our clients. This may have caused some delays while we would be waiting for our clients to be operating and able to cooperate with us. Moreover, remote communication has been a real changer of the game, because our clients are used to our engineers visiting their premises, operating on site and communicating their issues in person. Our staff members got used to the new situation and are finding ways to optimize functionalities by creating alternative proactive plans. This induces creativity, problem solving skills, risk management skills, and brings about the best in each and every employee at AEG. We sure hope this pandemic gets over as soon as possible after all the bad ways it has impacted people around the world, yet, we cannot deny that it has given us many lessons on the business and personal levels equally. |
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In This Issue |
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01. Universal Payment Confirmation |
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02. AEG MT-ISO Converter |
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03. Working with COVID-19 |
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“it is not too late to order your confirmations application; AEG is ready to help”
“Migrate your MT messages to ISO20022 with AEG’s MT-ISO Converter”
Announcements ü We are done testing for inhouse applications compatibility with SWIFT version 7.5. All our applications are ready to work with releases 7.4 and 7.5. ü Due to COVID-19, SWIFT is allowing self-attestation against 2019 controls. ü SWIFT will enable ISO 20022 messages for cross-border payments and cash reporting businesses starting from the end of 2022, which extends the originally announced date by one year. ü ESMIG Roadmap (T2-T2S consolidation project): As announced on 28 July 2020, ECB’s Governing Council approved one-year extension to T2-T2S consolidation project timeline. The project is now scheduled to go live in November 2022. In addition, the Governing Council has approved to start User Testing in December 2021. ü Universal payment confirmations are still planned to be rolled out as from 22 November 2020 for all FIN users as documented in the FIN Service Description, section 21 – Universal Confirmations. However, the measurement and visibility to counterparties of adherence by non-gpi banks will be deferred by 6 months and will commence on 1 June 2021. ü VPN Migration: due to COVID-19, Migration Deadline moved to 31 Dec 2020 ü Standard MT 2020: Due to operational stresses caused by COVID-19, SWIFT is prioritizing for 22 November 2020 only the MT Category 5 (Securities Markets) messages, which are required to enable compliance with forthcoming European regulations, Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR) and Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) II. |
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The third quarter of this year has been by far the
hardest on Lebanon due to the massive catastrophic explosion that hit the
port of Beirut on August 4 which has enormously devastated the city and
shattered the souls of the Lebanese people wherever they existed. Despite the
trauma, we assure our community that AEG was luckily not impacted by the
happenings and is managing to operate normally as ever. Moreover, AEG has
become more and more redundant providing more availability with a third site located
in France in addition to Lebanon and Cyprus.
