Standard No. 17: a new step toward automated data exchange between banks and authorised bodies

Banks handle a steady volume of statutory information requests from enforcement officers, courts and other authorised bodies. Processing them is a significant administrative undertaking today: each request has to be assessed correctly, the information located, a response assembled and then delivered securely to the requester.

This is the area that Standard No. 17 of the Czech Banking Association moves forward substantially, by unifying the way information is exchanged electronically between banks and authorised bodies.

From documents to structured data

The fundamental change Standard No. 17 brings is a shift away from exchanging information largely as documents, toward exchanging structured data.

The Czech Banking Association defines the standard as a set of rules for data exchange, including definitions of data structures and XML formats.

The difference matters. A document such as a PDF or a spreadsheet is designed primarily to be read by a person. An XML message is structured so that its contents can be interpreted unambiguously by an information system.

A request therefore no longer has to be an electronic version of a paper document. Each item of information has a predefined meaning and can be read and processed automatically by the receiving application.

The same principle applies in the other direction, to the bank's response.

The basis for genuine automation

Standardised data is what makes automating the whole process possible.

When a bank receives a request in a clearly defined data structure, its systems can automatically identify the case, the person or the type of information being sought, and route the request to the relevant internal systems for processing.

The resulting data can then be assembled automatically into a standardised response and returned to the authorised body.

In practice, this makes the following process possible:

authorised body → structured request → automated processing at the bank → structured response → automated processing at the authorised body

Publicly available implementation guidance for enforcement offices already describes the use of XML communication with banks that support CBA Standard No. 17, including automated processing of the banks' XML responses.

Standard No. 17 is therefore not merely a technical specification for a message format. It is above all a shared communication language on which automated processing of statutory information requests can be built.

Less manual work, fewer errors

One of the greatest benefits of standardisation is how much manual work it removes.

When different institutions send similar requests in different forms, the bank has to interpret each format, re-enter or convert the data, and then prepare a response in whatever way suits the particular requester.

Every one of those steps costs staff time and creates room for error.

A standardised data format allows a large part of this work to be handled automatically. Staff can then concentrate on the cases that genuinely require individual judgement.

The result can be a lower administrative burden, fewer manual errors and more effective use of the bank's capacity.

Faster turnaround

Automation also shortens the time needed to process an individual request considerably.

In a traditional process, an employee has to open the request, read it, interpret it, locate the relevant information and prepare a response. In an automated process, many of these steps can happen within seconds and without any user intervention.

This matters most at institutions handling large volumes. As volume grows, automation saves not only time on a single request but a substantial amount across the process as a whole.

One set of rules for everyone

Another significant benefit of Standard No. 17 is that it establishes common rules.

Without standardisation, every party can have its own idea of what a request should look like, what the individual data items should be called, or how a response should be structured. Banks then have to support a range of different communication variants.

The standard limits this problem by defining a common data structure and a common method of communication.

For banks, this means building one standardised interface rather than individual solutions for each counterparty.

Authorised bodies gain the same advantage. Their information systems can communicate in much the same way with several banks, without having to create an entirely different process for each institution.

Better oversight and traceability

Structured electronic communication also improves record-keeping and control.

Individual requests and responses can be identified unambiguously, matched automatically and tracked by status. An organisation can therefore see more precisely when a request arrived, how it was processed and when the response was sent.

That matters operationally, and also for audit, compliance and the handling of any complaints or disputes.

An automated process also makes it easier to identify non-standard situations, such as a request that could not be processed automatically and has to be passed to a member of staff for individual handling.

A foundation, not a finished solution

Adopting Standard No. 17 does not, of course, mean that statutory information requests start handling themselves.

What the standard defines is how systems pass data to one another and interpret it. For a bank to realise its potential, it has to build the corresponding process and application layer on top: receiving the request, validating and processing it, retrieving information from internal systems and generating the response.

But that is precisely where its value lies.

Standardised inputs and outputs make it possible to automate the bank's internal part of the process step by step. What began as an administrative function built around documents can become a managed digital process in which people deal mainly with the exceptions.

A benefit for the whole ecosystem

The advantages of Standard No. 17 cannot be judged from the perspective of a single bank or a single authorised body.

The more institutions adopt it, the greater the benefit.

Banks gain a more uniform intake channel for processing requests. Authorised bodies gain a predictable way of communicating with banks. Software vendors can build solutions on a shared interface instead of a multitude of individual integrations.

The result is an environment in which a large part of the routine communication between institutions can be handled faster, cheaper and with fewer manual interventions.

Standard No. 17 is therefore more than a new XML format. It creates the technological foundation for a gradual move from exchanging electronic documents to genuine digital data exchange.

And that is where its main contribution lies: information no longer has to travel between institutions as a document that someone must open and read. It can be passed as structured data that the information systems on both sides understand and can process automatically.

That opens the way to a considerably higher degree of automation across the whole area of statutory information requests, from receiving a request through to sending the response.