Populating Account Numbers - Overview

Past efforts by the securities industry to reduce the risk and cost of trade-settlement failure by automating settlement made apparent the need to standardize SWIFT settlement message formatting. The Securities Market Practice Group (SMPG) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) provided guidance in resolving this problem, and the ISO technical committee, ISO/TC68 (Banking, Securities and Related Financial Services), prepared ISO 15022 in the late 1990s.

ISO 15022 specifies message-design principles and tools that enable different client segments to design standardized message types that support their specific information flows. The tools comprise a set of syntax and message design rules, a dictionary of data fields, and a catalog for present and future messages built by the industry with these rules and fields.

DTCC later introduced the settlement chain concept for completing ALERT platform settlement instructions in a manner consistent with the ISO 15022 guidelines.

DTCC wishes to thank the U.S. and E.M.E.A. working parties for their invaluable participation in the publication of these market/business rules information, which explain how to use the settlement chain concept to complete ALERT platform settlement instructions. They describe the field definitions of the The ALERT platform fields and the ISO 15022 guidelines, and recommend how the ALERT platform clients should populate their settlement instructions to ensure that settlement messages are successfully enriched with ALERT data.

The recommendations in these market/business rules information are relevant for all ALERT platform releases. If you adhere to them, each client segment can interpret ALERT platform fields in the same way as other client segments. The consistent interpretation and use of ALERT platform data can facilitate successful settlement messages through SWIFT or other means.