一个古老的金融业用力面临新技术的威胁 - 从自己的吱吱作响的治理方面。
Andrew Capon和Jacqueline S. Gold
2001年9月
亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者杂志
The race doesn't always go to the swift. Nobody knows this better than the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
Formed in 1973 by the world's biggest banks, Swift pursued a clear and, for that time, bold objective: to create a secure electronic network for the payments, letters of credit and other messages that the banks had been exchanging inefficiently and haphazardly by mail and telex. It took four years to get the system up and running, but long before anybody was talking about an information superhighway, Swift had one. Today the network is a fixture in the banking and securities infrastructure, handling more than 1 billion electronic messages a year for 7,000 institutions in 192 countries. It plays a role in the transmission, tracking and settling of some $5 trillion in transactions every day.
除了任何东西之外，斯威夫特通过了它的大部分内容。作为一个合作社，数百家银行拥有并面临直接竞争对手，Swift在没有推动其他科技企业的产品和利润压力的情况下设定自己的步伐。
Despite its accomplishments as a shared utility, Swift lately is under a great deal of pressure. The Internet has changed the economics of its core networking service and raised the unfamiliar specter of competition. Swift's membership, broadened over the past year and a half to include securities and asset management firms, runs ever greater risks of political fractiousness that could threaten its hallmark spirit of cooperation. And at a time when the world's financial institutions are tightening expense controls, Swift must justify its existence by working harder for more masters, without demanding too much in return.
All the while, Swift's management, led by a hard-charging American with unabashedly entrepreneurial tendencies, is locking horns with a board of banker-directors who have never wanted their joint venture to stray too far into commercial territory. Out of these tensions have emerged wide-ranging internal debates about strategy, structure and governance. Among the issues: Does Swift have sufficient resources and flexibility - and speed - to adapt to new technologies and competitive threats? Should Swift break its nonprofit shackles in favor of some form of privatization, perhaps even a public stock offering? Will there even be a need for Swift in five to ten years?
如果它更快，更加果断，Swift可能会让这些事项现在休息。相反，他们溃烂。Leonard Schrank是1992年加入Swift的钝马萨诸塞州的马萨诸塞州毕业生毕业生每天抵抗合作社的约束。然而，他仍然非常有信心，斯威夫特将证明其价值。
Schrank说，这是一场战斗，“保持相关”。这意味着他和他的员工1,700人必须继续取悦他们的许多老板 - 特别是3,000加上合作社股份的3,000多个机构。在过去相对容易的：随着消息卷上升并单位成本下降，Swift将降低其费用并向成员支付扣缴。
To maintain that consistency, Schrank has the company pursuing an aggressive 50 percent price-reduction target over the next four years. But at the same time, Swift must spend money on new systems and services based on Internet technologies, which didn't exist for most of the organization's life.
Wary of being blindsided by nimbler, Internet-savvy competitors, Schrank insists that Swift finally take its name seriously. "No one ever said Swift couldn't be faster," snaps the 54-year-old CEO, who ran an international computer services business for Chase Manhattan Corp. before he joined Swift. "Can Swift do better? Yes. Does Swift have to move faster? Yes. Things are moving fast. Swift has to constantly be asking tough questions, and the governance of Swift has to be responsive."
事情确实很快。Swift的原始网络是一个真正的效用;没有人可能会冒出重复的麻烦和费用。如今，随着互联网协议的开放通信标准的免费可用性，SWIFT失去了独特性。另一个提供商可以将IP与不同的软件和安全成分混合，以提供类似类似的服务菜单。至少有一个新初，路透社集团的合资企业和称为Radianz的校准，对挑战性迅速产生了噪音。
"I can see a dozen scenarios that have us going out of business by 2010. I really worry about the future of Swift," Schrank admits.
While Schrank worries, Swift keeps running in a neoclassical fortress in La Hulpe, Belgium, which happens to be ten kilometers from the battlefield at Waterloo where Napoleon met his match in 1815. "Swift has survived 25 years, and there are not many cooperatives you can say that about," boasts its CEO. "When I arrived the joining fee was $35,000; now it's $5,000. The price per message averaged 40 cents; now it's 7 or 8 cents. We used to have only bank standards; now we have cross-industry standards. We had 80 or 90 [securities industry users]; now we have 900. We didn't have any clearing and settlement infrastructures using Swift; now we have 30 or 40."
这一切都很好，善良，但成员想要相关性，而不是过去成就的重新结转。为此，SWIFT正在将其对证券行业的策略赋予，这预计将在两年内产生超过一半的SWIFT流量。
Swift的董事，几乎完全来自商业银行业，开始通过创建Schrank称之为证券转向委员会的“影子委员会”，在1998年开始为证券业务提供。在2000年4月，SWIFT通过弗朗西斯轮胎领导的证券行业部门的形成重振了其管理，这是一个14年的迅速退伍军人。新实体旨在与迅速的传统银行方面取得平衡，由前国家威斯敏斯特银行行政查尔斯布莱恩特领导。
Swift pretty much owns the banking franchise; banking messages have been growing 12 to 15 percent a year and are likely to surpass 800 million in 2001. "Swift seems pretty healthy to me, and I can't see anything that is looming that might threaten it," says Eric Sepkes, the Citibank executive who serves as chairman of London's Clearing House Automated Payment System.
相比之下，SWIFT在证券卷的年增长率从过去三年增加了39％至49％至55％。证券目前占35％至38％的股票和近一半的威瑞斯收入总额为4.43亿美元，而且景观是稳定的：证券公司正在摔跤全球化和跨境投资的成本和运作负担。SWIFT在影响交易和清算的必要标准方面看到了逻辑角色。它正在加强其参与技术协议和要求，如修复（财务信息交换），STP（直通处理），T + 1（交易日期加一天结算）和ISO 15022（国际消息传递）Swift积极推动的标准，将在明年采用）。
事实上，Schrank将标准设置视为商业势在必行。因此，在迅速任务中的所有其他矛盾之上 - 银行和证券优先事项，在旧的后台和新的互联网技术之间 - Schrank也希望朋友和敌人来看看Swift仲裁者。
在散步这些精细的线路中，Swift与万事达卡国际和签证国际，信用卡协会在20世纪60年代和20世纪70年代成立的信用卡协会有很多共同之处。两年前，John Reed然后Citigroup的合作首席执行官得出结论认为签证太强大和不灵活，以适应花旗利士的利益。他辞去签证的董事会，并将花旗背后的大量体重增加了，即将从合作社转换为股票公司，根据业务量分配股份。花旗集团成为最大的股东。
Swift has never faced such open rebellion and has steered clear of stock conversion. But it faces its own issues. Because directorships are allocated geographically, Citigroup, Swift's biggest user, isn't represented on its 25-member board. (Among the seat holders: Spain's Banco Sabadell, Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia, the Chilean Bankers Association and Korea Exchange Bank.) So far Swift has remained accountable enough to satisfy Citi and other big wheels. Says Sepkes, European payment infrastructure director at Citibank: "Swift is the banks. We own it, we use it, we pay for it, and we have a large say in running it. It's up to us to make sure it delivers what we want."
The management and board did square off in the early 1990s, when some members complained that Swift was straying from its networking mission. Management went so far as to propose a corporate-to-corporate payment service that could bypass the banks, and the board cracked down. "Swift started going off in a direction that did not suit its owners and members. Its executives became very independent," recalls Yawar Shah, an executive vice president of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and deputy chairman of Swift.
从那时起，董事就决定了一个更强大的手。他们取代了首席执行官Bessel Kok，这是一名Swift早年的退伍军人，与Schrank。莎娜说，董事会自迅速松动，并以速度迅速，主要委托了Swift的证券战略和电子商务计划 - 例如一个名为Bolero.net的在线贸易文件冒险 - 工作人员。解释Shah：“我们向行政道说，'你赢得了右边。虽然它总是可以在自己的方向上脱落，但强大的电路板确保它是正确的方向。“
Today the board is buying into the Internet. Like many Old Economy businesses, Swift took a while to wake up, but in 1997 it declared that the Internet would be its future network. Swift is now on course to replace its closed-network infrastructure with an IP-based system, SwiftNet, by 2004.
Although that was a clean technological break, it was far less of a departure than Swift's related decision, announced in February, to outsource its original business, network management, to Global Crossing for at least $300 million over five years.
快速视图位于百慕大群岛电信carrier as a powerful ally that can bring to bear the financial markets expertise of two companies that it acquired last year, IXnet and IPC Communications. Explains Schrank: "We are accelerating our network strategy by contracting it out. We are going from hundreds of network providers to one, hundreds of contracts to one, and over the next five years, we expect to save hundreds of millions of dollars." Although outsourcing can't answer all strategic and political questions, he notes that "it gives us the scale and scope to have the lowest possible costs, and we need that to be able to compete with other IP networks."
这些威胁可能包括Radianz或网络新时代，互联网软件公司于1994年由前高盛，Sachs＆Co.技术首席乔治（Rick）亚当始于乔治（Rick）亚当，并于6月份获得了Sybase。这些供应商提供与SWIFT的联系。他们作为修复和STP标准的支持者，他们展示了自己，如Swift。但尚未安装明显的攻击。
Launched in early 2000, Radianz has expressly focused on financial markets, assembling a client list that includes Instinet Group and Island ECN. With SwiftNet under construction, New York-based Radianz claims to have the largest available IP network for the financial industry.
W. Brennan Carley, Radianz's chief product and technology officer, says that Swift would be vulnerable if it remained a network operator. But in its expanding securities roles - including support of fully automated straight-through processing of trades - Swift could complement Radianz. Says Carley: "The key question is how quickly will Swift move. If they create value in the messaging and standards areas, we're not a threat. We could see Swift some day actually making use of our network - assuming they move to more of an open or network-agnostic model. But that may take a while."
为了在海湾保持任何竞争，SWIFT必须继续提高信息量。这就是为什么它终于为去年和6月份的保险公司和政府机构提供了全部成员资金到基金经理和经纪人经销商。大多数350万加证券消息，即Swift Handles每年都在全球监护者和当地代理银行之间的后期通信。Schrank预计，部分通过强调诸如欧洲交易所和中央证券住址的斯威夫特的公正性，部分努力将不断增长。“我们希望所有人都使用我们，因此它整合了，它被简化，因为他们已经有了Swift连接，”他说。
Adds securities chief Remacle, "We know we still have a long way to go, but we are gravitating toward this position of being a central hub of communication."
SWIFT旨在通过标准化加强其中心性和中立性。为了担心这项努力，去年年底聘请了Euroclear Sollement Utility和国际标准化证券行业委员会国际组织主席Jean-Marie Eloy。7月SWIFT与FIX协议组织达成协议，以采取证券公司前后办事处的通信规范。
Swift还在Postrade的肌肉弯曲，通过其在Axion4Gstp的20％股权，与瑞士公司TKS-TEKNOSOFT，技术服务提供商和SISSEGAINTERSETLE，SCURITICES4GSTP，Assion4GSTP中的20％的股份展开了预防性处理。Zurich-based axion4 is vying with Omgeo, a U.S.-based joint venture of Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. and Thomson Corp., to help accelerate STP, a prerequisite for the T+1 settlement cycle that the U.S.'s Securities Industry Association hopes to implement in 2004.
Schrank expects Swift's neutrality to pay off here, too. Both axion4 and Omgeo are expected to make their systems compatible enough so that transactions entered in one system can be communicated to the other. "We can be the link that will allow them to interoperate. We just want to plug and play," says Schrank. "We are into helping everyone get to T+1."
Swift's tilt toward securities may make strategic sense, but it led James Economides, the organization's director of securities services, to resign last December. Economides, who now heads London-based consulting firm Thomas Murray Investor Services, doubted that Swift could move fast enough to meet the industry's needs.
纽约全球监护巨头银行和Swift证券转向委员会主席的行政副总裁Kurt Woetzel捍卫合作社的纪录，称“基金会已经奠定了更强大的推动证券业务。”但他承认，“Swift可以做更多。这将永远是真的。”
如何更迅速将由这个定义吗e inherent tensions between cooperation and competition, between old and new members and between directors and managers. The faster Swift wants to run, the more it needs "bright people who are going to want to go off on their own, to stretch the vehicle that they have," says Nicholas Viner, the London-based head of Boston Consulting Group's payment systems practice. But a cooperative, unable to offer stock incentives as compensation, can only go so far in competing for talent.
演讲在圣Francisco last September at Swift's annual convention, Bank of America Corp. chief financial officer James Hance suggested a radical solution: "Explore whether to continue as a cooperative or go public. There are obviously advantages to both. The organization needs to make this decision based not on what has worked in the past year but what will work in a future where nimbleness, innovation and capital will be essential elements of success."
Hance wasn't the first to raise the idea, and he hasn't changed his opinion. But Swift insiders don't see an IPO happening. Says J.P. Morgan's Shah: "There is a synergy between the financial institutions and Swift because they own it. There is not a compelling reason to take it public. You would lose the synergy."
ABN AMRO银行和SWIFT董事会主席JAAP KAMP表示，“这里的比喻是拥有票务网络和基础设施并私有化的航空公司。但银行不喜欢航空公司。他们不需要钱，他们喜欢控制。很明显，银行仍然希望共同发展和共同拥有市场基础设施。“
Swift正在探索私有化和现状之间的中间地位：创造可以为所有者和经理提供投资回报的企业。原型是Bolero.net，于1999年推出，以自动化提单和其他国际贸易文件。虽然它像其他B2B初创企业一样伤害，但去年的Bolero从伦敦Apax Partners领导的私募股权集团筹集了5000万美元。
Kamp describes his board as "quite willing to recognize the need to make investments beyond our core businesses, and it should be possible to do both spin-offs and acquisitions." However, Kamp thinks that members should pony up the funding. Swift doesn't throw off a lot of cash; it booked a mere $637,000 profit last year. "If the members cannot see the benefit, there would be little point in going to a venture capitalist," adds Kamp.
虽然Swift的风险风险警务人员倾向于挖掘刹车，Schrank和他更不耐烦的商业经理棚车，以按下加速器。没有人似乎完全幸福，但车辆沿着喧嚣。波士顿咨询的Viner说，“人们会呻吟迅速移动的速度，但许多人都会难以置信。”
Schrank says his members get their money's worth: "We are run commercially. If you look around, you can't say that this isn't an information services business with fierce competition. People are here on the weekends. We run hard."
但他们是在轨道上吗？“我们相信我们有正确的方向，”沙阿说。“关键是有效的执行。谈话很便宜。”谈话是从未在La Hulpe缺乏的一件事。