What progress is being made to accelerate interoperability and how can standards help increase transparency and reduce risk?

In the coming years the emphasis in our industry will continue to be on straight through processing and investment will continue to take place in the area of standardisation. This will be part of the reactions to the current economic conditions but also due to pressure from regulators that start to realise the role of standards in making business information accessible, transparent and comparable. There are already success stories on standards: Settlement and Reconciliation is one. However, in the area of corporate actions the challenge for the market players is considerable. This paper argues that the community has a weakness in the process and methodology of standards implementation since it seems to be unable to market the benefits in order to accelerate adoption of usage. Going forward, focus should shift in the concept of how ‘implementable’ a standard is. it is required, first, that the integrated standards and supporting development tools are in place to make the adoption smooth, and secondly the supporting tools are in place to make the decision-making process for institutions simple and self-evident. This would mean promoting the business justification and business case as a means of persuading senior management of their value.