Financial standards developers receive leadership award

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By Maria Lazarte
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The achievement of a team of experts developing financial ISO standards has been recognized through an award for excellence and superior performance, presented on 18 September at the 36th ISO General Assembly, held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

 
From left: ISO Vice-President (technical management) Elisabeth Stampfl-Blaha, ISO/TC 68 Secretary Cindy Fuller, Chair ISO/TC 68 Karla McKenna, ISO President Terry Hill.  
Winning team for the LDE leadership award

The technical committee, ISO/TC 68, Financial services, is one of ISO's oldest, created in 1948.

"In financial services, standards exist to support our business processes, to make business more efficient, predictable, and sustainable," explained ISO/TC 68 Chair Karla McKenna, who received the award on behalf of the committee.

"We develop and use standards to mitigate business and operational risks, to improve efficiency and drive out cost, since standards reduce transaction errors, failures and fraud. Standards lessen or eliminate the financial consequences of not having secure, complete and clear information needed to complete financial transactions."

She drew attention to the consequences of the recent recession and the role standards can play in recovery. "The wave of reform regulation and legislation resulting from the global financial crisis relies on transparency in terms of data gathering to support risk analysis. Without standards, effectively monitoring the global financial markets will be extremely difficult."

"The transparency that standards can help achieve is essential in maintaining efficient financial and capital markets going forward, demonstrating that our work in standardization is truly a public good."

ISO President Terry Hill congratulated the committee, which won the award because of its:

  • Excellent overall committee performance statistics
  • Effective leadership
  • Proactive project management
  • Good communication, and
  • Efforts to promote the involvement of developing countries

In particular, he underlined their efforts to engage stakeholders, Some of the committee's best practices include ‘meet the market’ meetings for financial professionals who would like to know more about ISO/TC 68. This allows the industry and TC experts to share ideas and questions, and opens dialogue for future cooperation, he said.

The President drew attention to the TC’s most recent success stories:

  • ISO 17442: 2012, Financial services – Legal entity identifier
  • ISO 20022 (parts 1-8): 2013, Financial services – Universal financial industry message scheme.

Why do we need standards for financial services?


Maria Lazarte
Maria Lazarte

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