Mumbai: Global financial messaging cooperative Swift on Thursday blamed the shortcomings in banks’ automated payment processes and also reconciliations for the regulatory penalties on 19 of them over the past few weeks and said it’s not their job to police the lenders.
Over the past week, the RBI has penalised 19 banks, including SBI and ICICI Bank, for non-compliance with the Swift system, the virtual connection between India and the rest of the world when it comes to financial messaging. The penalty ranged between Rs 1 and Rs 4 crore and the penalty totals Rs 40 crore.
Alain Raes, Swift CEO for Asia Pacific and EMEA, refused to comment on the penalised banks’ contention that such shortcomings are “minor” in nature. “It’s about STP (straight through processing) automation within a bank’s operations, which has nothing to do with us, and also reconciliation,” Raes told reporters. He also stressed that none of these shortcomings are Swift’s own doing & expressed their inability to police all the members.
