Swift has launched a case management service for investigating payment defaults that it claims could save its member banks millions of dollars in operational costs and significantly reduce the time it takes to identify and resolve issues when international payments are delayed.

The member-owned co-operative says financial institutions spend more than $1.6 billion each year on labour-intensive processes to investigate payments that get held up – which can occur regardless of technology or network used – with some of the largest global banks incurring more than $20 million annually in fees and penalties only.

Swift’s Case Management solution standardises the investigation process, utilising ISO 20022 data and the unique end-to-end transaction reference (UETR) standard to provide transparency and interoperability across networks. By capturing information centrally, it eliminates the high number of manual touchpoints typically involved in an investigation between sending and receiving institutions.

Swift says the service has the potential to cut the industry’s operational and liquidity costs on payment investigations by more than $600 million per year, and reduce the time to resolve a case by up to 80 percent.

Shirish Wadivkar, global head of transaction management, Swift says: “Inefficient investigations processes are impacting the industry greatly in terms of cost and time and drastically affecting the customer experience. Our enhanced solution addresses the main pain points in investigating incidents, helping our community make gains in efficiency, time, and costs to provide the experience that customers expect.”

Juan Olaizola, CEO, PagoNxt Payments Hub, agrees: “With faster resolution times and greater transparency into the status of investigations, we can significantly enhance our customers’ experience. In turn, a better and more efficient management of payment incidents, will help reduce both our liquidity and operational costs. It’s a virtuous circle where everyone stands to benefit.”