Swift Is Thinking Small
Securities head Church says cost-efficiencies and localization are priorities
February 16, 2009
In a chilly economic climate, the 8,300-member Swift messaging cooperative has been extending its reach, says Chris Church, global head of the organization's securities division and CEO in the Americas. Swift, which is headquartered in La Hulpe, Belgium, has been bolstering its presence in North America and elsewhere as its "center of gravity is moving toward where our customers are," he explains.
According to Church, who joined in August, "regionalization" has been a priority at Swift under Lazaro Campos, chief executive since April 2007 and former head of the banking industry division. The Americas are "particularly important," says Church, "because of the growth opportunities that exist in Canada, the U.S. and South America. But all the regions are important. It's part of our strategy of reach."
That strategy also applies to the type of clients Swift is pursuing. Alliance Lite, a lightweight interface introduced in September, is likely to draw low-volume firms to the Swift network. "Later on this year," notes Church, "we think smaller hedge funds will be users of Alliance Lite."
Church has maintained a relatively low public profile since taking over a post left vacant for more than a year-his predecessor, James Donavan, stepped down as Campos was taking the top spot. Church joined Swift from Radianz, where he had been managing director since BT acquired the financial extranet provider in 2005. Formed five years earlier as a joint venture of Equant--now Orange Business Services--and Reuters, Radianz is "about building communities," notes Church, "but Swift got there before Radianz by some 35 years." He calls Swift the "original shared market infrastructure."
In a recent discussion with Securities Industry News, Church, who says he knows how to "build, grow and enrich communities," spoke at length about how the cooperative is coping with the financial crisis and what he has seen in his first six months on the job. A veteran of Reuters, where he began his career and held several senior roles in London and New York, including sales director of the company's international division, Church was head of global sales and marketing at Radianz prior to the BT deal.
What did you know about Swift before you arrived? I've obviously been observing Swift from afar. Taking that community to the next level might make us the ultimate shared service, which is really a 21st century opportunity. We all know that the financial services industry is undergoing an earthquake-like crisis and we don't know what the aftershocks are going to be like. You're seeing revenues going down, margins getting squeezed and we're without a doubt going to see more regulation, whether self-imposed or mandated. That's going to further burden the industry. At a time when the industry is driving for efficiency, total cost of ownership--TCO--is going to be paramount. Scale will be used to bring down prices, and I think people will look at the way they've been doing business in the past and conclude that shared infrastructures are the place to be.
Your predecessor attempted to bring a new culture to Swift, essentially viewing it as a sales organization. What changes would you like to make? The change that I've seen happening is that we've regionalized. Before, we were a global franchise but the center of gravity was somewhere over Belgium. What we're seeing now through regionalization is customer-centricity. Lazaro has taken an organization with a centralized structure and put in a regional structure. The rationale is to not simply assume products and solutions created centrally will be relevant to all regions. I see my job as making sure that I understand what the industry is looking for, take that back to Lazaro and the team, and figure out how we can customize that for the local community as opposed to a one-size-fits-all.
