Dubai: The UAE Banks Federation (UBF), a professional body representing 49 member banks operating in the UAE, hosted a high-level delegation from SWIFT, the global provider of secure financial messaging services.
The delegation led by Alain Raes, Chief Executive for Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific for SWIFT — met with UBF’s executive management and chairmen of concerned technical committees to discuss key issues and challenges facing the UAE’s banking industry including cybersecurity and the future of cross-border payments.
During the meeting, Raes updated UBF members on the SWIFT 2020 Strategy which aims at ensuring continued operational excellence in its core financial messaging services, as well as the recently-introduced Customer Security Programme, a dedicated programme helping customers to reinforce the security of their SWIFT-related infrastructure. The programme supports customers in strengthening their cyber risk management in the face of persistent threat of attacks.
Cross-border payments
SWIFT presented an overview of its global payments innovation initiative, which will improve corporate customers’ experience of correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments.
“The meeting comes in line with UBF initiatives to introduce a series of measures aimed at tightening up security throughout the banking ecosystem. Building closer collaboration with SWIFT and exploring the different ways we can benefit from their global expertise in cybersecurity and risk and management is key to ensuring that these initiatives deliver the desired level of results,” stated Nasser Sarris, Director General, UAE Banks Federation.
