SWIFT plays a pivotal role in advancing the ISO 20022 standard. In efforts to enhance efficiency and expedite standard development, Tom Poppe and his team decided to use Graph Technology. In this session, Tom will share insights gained, lessons learned, and highlight advancements in reusability with the help of Graph Technology.

1. Maintaining Critical
Standards in the Financial
Services Industry with
Graph Technology
March 2024
Presentation at
GraphSummit Benelux

2. About Swift
We’re the global specialist in financial transactions,
founded to enable the financial community to move value
quickly, securely and with unrivaled precision.
And as a neutral cooperative, we’re trusted to do this every
instant of every day.
Messaging Standards are a fundamental pillar for processing
financial transactions “with unrivaled precision”
Swift acts as the ISO 20022 Registration authority, and is
also the main contributor
2024
Page 2

3. Our network is unique
A community of 11,500+
financial institutions
Stretching 200+ countries
and territories
40,000+ active payment
routes
Connecting 4bn accounts
235+ market
infrastructures
89% of transactions
processed on our network
reach recipient banks
within an hour
Around 50% of payments
are credited to end
beneficiaries within five
minutes
Nearly all within 24 hours
11.9 billion+ messages
sent in 2023
Average of 47.6m
messages delivered
each day
4.5% FIN annual
growth over 2022
2023 peak day of 55m
messages
99.994% FIN availability
99.997% SwiftNet
availability
89% Customer Security
Programme self-attestation
rate
2024
Page 3
Reach Speed Volume
& Growth
Resilience

4. 2024
Page 4
What is ISO 20022
ISO 20022 : A Model Driven Messaging Standard.
MessageDefinitions are designed based on a
repository of structural components and datatypes.
Components and datatypes are build for reuse
The repository has “Versioning inside”

5. 2024
Page 5
ISO 20022 repository sample
The
ISO
20022
repository is now
in
a
graph
db
ISO
an
XM
L File
ISO 20022
Repository is a graph

6. 2024
Page 6
About the size of the repository: Reason to put it in
Neo4J
Match Result = (allMessages:mx_messageDefinition) return count (allMessages) as NumberOf
Messages
Match Result = (allComponents:mx_messageComponent) return count (allComponents) as Numb
erOfComponents
Match Result = (allDataTypes:mx_dataType) return count (allDataTypes) as NumberOfallDataTyp
es

7. March 2024
Page 7 The need for a strong basis for multi user, web based
application: Reason to use Neo4J
Standards
Editor
Standards
Developer Local
repository
Central Repository
(Single file)
Standards
Editor
Standards
Developer
Local
repository
Merge
process
• Capacity issues
• Legacy technology
• Prevents collaborative
tooling
• Time consuming updates
Standards
Developer
Standards
Developer
Central Repository
Graph DB
Standards
Platform
• Multi user
• Scalable
• Cloud ready
• More querying
possibilities
Previous
solution
Current
solution
Standards
Editor
Local
repository
Standards
Editor
Local
repository
Automatic
upload
Bloom
Analysis tool
Browser

8. March 2024
Page 8 Lessons learned
• Design is (still) key !
• Design for simple queries
• Carefully consider labelling of nodes and relation types
• Abstraction labels help
• Anti pattern: Nodes are tables, relationships are
foreign keys
• Use OGM or other abstraction layers
• There is a learning curve to create performant
cypher queries
• Bloom links business & technical profiles

9. March 2024
Page 9 What’s next
• Migrate to fully web based
• On prem Neo4J to Cloud
• Exposure to external users
• Migrate downstream processors to use graph db
• AI: Analysis tool with text to cypher
• AI: Semantic compare