As an ISO standard, the new messages are useable over any network. Swift supports the standard on the Swift network and will drive adoption by offering investment firms, regulators and reporting intermediaries the opportunity to pilot the messages over Swift's file transfer service - SwiftNet FileAct - during the second half of 2007.

Keith Berrett, executive director at Morgan Stanley, said: "Every party involved in the flow should benefit from the creation of a standard message for reporting transactions. It will remove the need to maintain different schemas dependent upon who the information is being sent to and from, or what the instrument is."

BANKING TECHNOLOGY