The securities industry will be forced to take a big step towards the implementation of internet technologies this year when Swift moves its private network on to new internet standards. Now in pilot, the private extranet, SwiftNet, will bring lower transaction costs and enable the securities industry to take advantage of newer technology in their back offices.

At the same time Swift is updating the cumbersome messaging formats it has used for the past 25 years with a new standard, ISO 15022, which the industry must switch to over the next two years.