A planned change to the message standard for international funds transfers will have implications for international funds transfer instruction reporting to Austrac, the financial intelligence agency has warned.

Starting in November next year, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) will be migrating to the ISO 20022 message standard for cross-border and correspondent banking payments.

Austrac currently accepts message in SWIFT MT message format and does not accept ISO 20022 message formats.

Austrac said it would be working with the Reserve Bank and the Australian Payments Network to update IFTI reporting systems, which will require systems changes by reporting entities.

SWIFT issued a statement saying a number of global banks have endorsed its “ambitious roadmap”. They include Citigroup, Standard Chartered, Bank of China, Deutsche Bank, Bank of New York Mellon and BNP Paribas.

SWIFT said the change was designed to enable new services, improve efficiency and reduce costs.