This body of work reflects the emergence of ISO 20022 as the global standard in payment systems, and seeks to achieve greater efficiency and interoperability in cross border payments for financial institutions and end users. Moreover, the structured and robust nature of the ISO 20022 message format provides an opportunity to enhance the information content carried in a payment message, including remittance information to support straight through processing of corporate payments, and to promote greater innovation across a common message suite. Finally, for both the long term competitiveness of our financial institutions and end users, and for the primacy of the dollar as a global settlement currency, it is imperative that the anchor element of our nation’s payment system remains well integrated in an increasingly global marketplace. With detailed planning well underway, by the end of 2017 we expect to announce ISO 20022 message format specifications and an implementation timeline. While I recognize that I am speaking principally to an audience of securities professionals, I appreciate your indulgence of these critically important and strategic payment themes, especially given the inter-connectedness and mutual dependencies that exist across payment, clearing, and settlement infrastructures. Closer to your world, and as previously mentioned, we migrated the Fedwire Securities Service 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  in November 2015 to a new hardware and software platform. This undertaking was, by far, the largest element of the Fedwire Modernization Program and the most significant change to the Federal Reserve’s wholesale services in a generation.

Work in support of this collective interest proceeds across multiple fronts, including efforts to enhance end-to-end understanding of the links and relationships within a network; initiatives to enhance assurance that external endpoints are operating in adherence with an operator’s security requirements; and the development of centralized information services and application tools to enhance a participant’s management of fraud risk. Examples of these services and tools might include features that restrict transfers beyond a maximum dollar threshold, or to foreign beneficiaries, or outside of specified hours. Historically, and understandably, market infrastructures have operated on the presumption that endpoint security is principally the responsibility of the endpoint, and infrastructure security is principally the responsibility of the operator. Increasingly, reflecting the elevated cyber threat landscape, this distinction is not so clear, especially as endpoint security breaches can potentially have implications for public confidence in the network as a whole, even in circumstances when the operator’s infrastructure, applications, and security perimeter have not been compromised. Arguably, the collective industry focus on resiliency and security represents the challenge of our generation, with direct implications not merely for the functioning of financial markets but, even more fundamentally, for the commercial and economic activity they support. At the same time, and notwithstanding their consuming focus, security and resiliency do not represent ends, but means to an end. I’d therefore like to spend the balance of my valuable time with you reviewing a series of initiatives we are undertaking to enhance the value proposition of the Federal Reserve’s wholesale service suite.