SWIFTRef is SWIFT's reference data service. It provides authoritative data on financial institutions, BICs, IBANs, standing settlement instructions, and related identifiers used across payment routing, validation, screening, and onboarding.

Which SWIFTRef products do I actually need?

It depends on your flows. BIC Directory covers institution identification, IBAN Plus covers IBAN validation and BIC derivation, SSI Plus covers settlement instructions, and Bankers World is the research and lookup layer. Most engagements start by mapping products to specific control points.

Do you work remotely with banks and fintechs outside Singapore?

Yes. The work is delivered remotely worldwide, with engagements run in English, French, or Arabic.

How do you handle the gap between SWIFTRef data and our internal records?

Internal records are validated against the SWIFTRef reference data using deterministic, explainable checks. Proposed corrections are reviewed and approved by your team before anything is written back, so the migration stays auditable.

SWIFTRef Consultant and Consulting

Independent, practitioner-led SWIFTRef consulting for banks and fintechs. I onboard the SWIFTRef data portfolio into payment routing, sanctions screening, and client onboarding, and I fix the data quality problems that make those integrations fragile.

What a SWIFTRef consultant actually does

SWIFTRef is SWIFT's reference data service. The products are reliable, but the value only shows up once the data is mapped to your systems, kept current, and reconciled against the records you already hold. That last part is where most projects stall.

I work end to end: scoping which SWIFTRef products you need, designing the data model, wiring the feeds into your payment, compliance, and onboarding stacks, and putting controls in place so the data stays clean after go-live. The goal is a clean handover, not a dependency on me.

The SWIFTRef portfolio, and where each product fits

SWIFTRef is a portfolio, not a single file. The work is matching the right product to the right control point in your flows.

BIC Directory (formerly BIC Plus): institution identification and BIC validation for routing, screening, and onboarding.
IBAN Plus: IBAN structure validation and BIC derivation, so payments are addressed correctly before they leave your bank.
SSI Plus: standing settlement instructions to reduce repairs, returns, and manual exception handling.
Bankers World: the lookup and research layer for institution, network, and connectivity data.

Where SWIFTRef integrations go wrong

The reference data is sound. The friction comes from your side of the boundary: legacy internal records that were captured inconsistently over years, truncated names, stale BICs, and mappings that no one has reconciled against an authoritative source.

Drop a clean SWIFTRef feed next to messy internal data and the mismatches surface immediately. Without a remediation step, teams end up maintaining two conflicting versions of the truth and the project loses momentum.

How the work is done: validated against clean reference data

The approach is to take your messy internal records and validate them cleanly against SWIFTRef (or another vendor's reference data), so the integration is seamless and the migration runs smooth. Every flag is deterministic and explainable, and every proposed correction is a suggestion a human approves, not a silent overwrite.

BankValidate is the reference build that demonstrates this remediation core. The public demo runs on synthetic data to show the deterministic checks and the review workflow; the same approach is what gets applied against live SWIFTRef and vendor data in a real engagement.

Independent, and close to the data

I am an independent consultant based in Singapore with more than 15 years at the intersection of finance and technology, working in English, French, and Arabic. The work has improved BIC and IBAN data quality for institutions at scale, fixed at the source rather than patched downstream.

You get a practitioner who has done the integration and the data clean-up before, without the overhead of a large firm.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SWIFTRef?: SWIFTRef is SWIFT's reference data service. It provides authoritative data on financial institutions, BICs, IBANs, standing settlement instructions, and related identifiers used across payment routing, validation, screening, and onboarding.
Which SWIFTRef products do I actually need?: It depends on your flows. BIC Directory covers institution identification, IBAN Plus covers IBAN validation and BIC derivation, SSI Plus covers settlement instructions, and Bankers World is the research and lookup layer. Most engagements start by mapping products to specific control points.
Do you work remotely with banks and fintechs outside Singapore?: Yes. The work is delivered remotely worldwide, with engagements run in English, French, or Arabic.
How do you handle the gap between SWIFTRef data and our internal records?: Internal records are validated against the SWIFTRef reference data using deterministic, explainable checks. Proposed corrections are reviewed and approved by your team before anything is written back, so the migration stays auditable.

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