On 14 August 2018, UK Finance published a ‘How to’ interpretative guide on the Funds Transfer Regulation (FTR) (also known as the Wire Transfer Regulation). The guide is intended to provide clarity and encourage market harmonisation on points material to, for example, straight-through processing. It’s intended to support the industry in meeting its objectives by ensuring that:

• systems and processes can identify the highest risk transactions; and
• wherever possible, straight-through-processing is not hindered.

The guide is voluntary and is in no way intended to replace or add to the legal requirements laid out in the FTR.

The guide will be reviewed periodically. In particular, in June 2018 the Bank of England published its consultation on its new ISO20022 message for the UK, the Common UK Credit Message (CCM). UK Finance states that generally speaking, the guide reflects the structure of the CCM but there are some proposed new elements that, if accepted during the consultation process, will need to be factored into the guide. These include purpose codes, legal entity identifiers and personal identifiers. The conclusion of the Brexit negotiations may also have an impact which will be considered in due course.