Enabling SWIFT

Since its foundation in 1928, Pioneer Investments has developed into one of the worlds most successful investment solutions companies. Today they offer investors access to a wide range of traditional mutual funds, managed accounts and alternative investment products. They currently manage over €113 billion of assets. Excellence in investing requires an innovative spirit and Pioneer have been a market leader when it comes to implementing industry standards.

The Problem

Pioneer Investment Management SGRpA (www.pioneerinvestments.it) has embraced the ISO15022 standards as an important part of its strategy for high levels of STP. They have taken the decision to work with the 15022 standard for all settlement and reconciliation communication with their partners. Their host system has COBOL structures containing all the information necessary for the complete settlement cycle. Pioneer needed a solution that could re-use their existing structures while being fully compliant with their strategy to communicate with their partners using the latest standards.

The Solution

Receiving SWIFT

Using the INCENTAGE COBOL loader, it was possible to instantly load the definitions of Pioneers data into the INCENTAGE RulesStudio. As Pioneer already had a clear view of the mappings they required, they were able to quickly implement the rules to map data from incoming SWIFT messages to their internal COBOL structures. Using the fact that INCENTAGE is capable of processing all SWIFT messages, Pioneer was able to set up routing to capture SWIFT messages that do not yet have mappings defined. They were also able to reconcile ACK (positive acknowledgement) and NAK (negative acknowledgements) received from SWIFT with messages they had already sent.

Sending Market Practice Compliant SWIFT

Having implemented the components to handle incoming SWIFT, Pioneer was able to re-use their work to quickly implement the more complex requirement to generate various SWIFT messages from their COBOL structures. Using the INCENTAGE RulesStudio, Pioneer was able to implement the Securities Market Practices (www.smpg.info) - thus ensuring that their messages enabled the highest levels of STP for their partners.

Compatible Infrastructure

As Pioneer already completes all internal message level communication over IBM’s WebSphere MQ (formerly MQSeries), they were pleased to see that they could rapidly configure INCENTAGE using a GUI to communicate using their existing internal infrastructure.

Training

Having quickly recognised the potential advantages of the INCENTAGE Middleware Suite Pioneer decided to build on this confidence by having their staff take a three-day INCENTAGE User training course in Milan. Having completed the training, Pioneer’s staff were in a position to take full control of the implementation and ensure its completion in such a short time.

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