ISO 20022 likened to Sagrada Familia at Sibos 2026

At Sibos 2026 in Miami, Swift announced in August 2026 that it would extend the planned November cutover to remove unstructured postal addresses from ISO 20022 payment messages after several banks requested more time. Swift said progress remained uneven across regions and an industry update is expected in December 2026.

Representatives from Swift, Standard Chartered, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Deloitte took part in a panel that examined why banks sought extensions and what practical steps are needed to embed structured address data across payment chains.

Nicolas Stuckens, head of ISO 20022 adoption and data quality at Swift, led the session and questioned whether the industry had focused mainly on preparing message formats rather than ensuring structured data exists where it originates. He asked how banks and their partners can capture, maintain and carry structured address information from customers through to payments systems.

Frank Van Driessche, head of ISO 20022 practice at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, outlined three phases for adoption: implementing the technical standard, structuring the data, and improving data quality. He compared the long, iterative nature of those phases to the Sagrada Familia and said the postponement would reduce the risk of widespread rejections and a decline in data quality. “I referred to ISO 20022 as the Sagrada Familia of the financial industry,” he noted.

From an operational perspective, Danielle Sharpe, global head of FI clearing and head of transaction banking and cash management, Americas at Standard Chartered, argued the work looks more like ongoing operations than a one-off technology upgrade. She pointed to tasks such as updating schema validations, adjusting messaging gateways and translating messages in payment layers, and observed that while banks hold technical connections, much of the underlying data sits with corporates and vendors who were not engaged early.

Miriam Ratkovicova, managing director at Deloitte, called for closer cooperation between compliance teams and business units. She said stronger messaging and control frameworks can support sanctions controls while also allowing banks to enter new markets and introduce products with clearer risk management.

Jerome Piens, chief operating officer at Swift, warned against attempting a simultaneous cutover across roughly 12,000 institutions on the network. He urged development of measures that assess true end-to-end readiness, tracing data from customers through payment market infrastructures, and better alignment among the business stakeholders responsible for populating payment information.

Background: the migration to ISO 20022 began after decisions in 2023 to move payment messaging to the richer standard. Swift had planned a November 2026 formatting cutover for postal addresses but extended that deadline in August 2026. The panel at Sibos focused on the differences between implementing message formats and the practical work of sourcing, owning and improving structured data across the payments ecosystem.