Introduction to Structured Financial Message System (SFMS)

This functionality allows the user to capture the Indian Financial System Code (IFSC) codes of the banks and generate INFINET (Indian Financial Network) Format Number (IFN) messages whenever the transaction happens in the LC (letter of credit), BG (bank guarantee) or Bills application, that warrants the exchange of messages between two banks or branches within India. Using this functionality, banks handle the IFN 760 COV e-messages for any new bank guarantee and the IFN 767 COV e-messages for any bank guarantee amendment (renewal) through the SFMS platform. Since the COV messages do not follow the SWIFT standards, the used tags are not the standard SWIFT tags. Hence, these messages will be generated as Print messages.

The Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS) is a secure messaging standard that serves as a platform for intra-bank and inter-bank applications like the National Electronics Funds Transfer (NEFT), Real-Time gross Settlement (RTGS), and so on. It is an Indian standard that is similar to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) standard used for financial messaging globally.

Currently SFMS is mandatory for any inter-bank messaging for documentary credit and bank guarantees. The department of financial services under the ministry of finance released a circular F.No.7/112/2011-BOA on July 2012, mandating the compulsory usage of SFMS for sending and receiving letter of credit and bank guarantee instruments. These guidelines restrict the issuance of any letter of credit or bank guarantee after 01.08.2012 except through the SFMS system. No letter of credit or bank guarantee from any other bank will be accepted except through the SFMS system.

The Tags Suppressed and Tags Included field has been added to the INLEND.SFMS.HEADER.DETAILS application to be able to suppress or include tags in IFN messages. The record Id of this field is IFN message.

The bank or branch within India for whom the IFSC code needs to be captured is created as a customer in Temenos Transact followed by an entry in the DE.ADDRESS application and also one in the RD.CENTRAL.BANK.DIR application.

The DE.MAPPING application channels the SFMS messages based on the IFSC bank code.

This functionality also allows the generation of COV messages when an Inland BG is issued or an Inland BG is amended. To achieve the generation of COV messages, the following new items have been introduced:

• The CUSTOMER,INLEND.BANKBRANCH.INPUT version has been introduced to hold the basic minimum details that are required to create the customer record.
• The INLEND.SFMS.HEADER.DETAILS application is used to hold the values that will be used for the creation of the header in the SFMS message.
• The INLEND.IFSC.UPLOAD.PARAM application is used to hold the versions of the CUSTOMER and DE.ADDRESS applications that will be used for automatic record creation.
• New fields are added to the RD.CENTRAL.BANK.DIR application to hold the additional details that are received through the IFSC file.
• The RD.CENTRAL.BANK.DIR,IFSC.INPUT version has been introduced to manually input the failed IFSC record upload.
• The RD.CENTRAL.BANK.DIR,IFSC.UPLOAD version has been introduced to create an IFSC record through the upload.
• The RD.CENTRAL.BANK.DIR,INLEND.MARK.INACTIVE version has been introduced to mark an IFSC record as inactive.
• The EB.FILE.UPLOAD,INLEND.IFSC.MONTHLY.UPLOAD version has been introduced to upload the IFTAS file.
• The INLEND.IFSC.MARK.INACTIVE enquiry has been introduced to display the records that are not found in the upload file but are found in the Temenos Transact system.
• New fields have been added to the MD.DEAL application to capture the user information related to the COV messages, through the MD.DEAL,INLEND.MT760C and MD.DEAL,INLEND.MT767C versions.
• The MD.DEAL,INLEND.MT760C version has been introduced to capture the information related to the IFN 760 COV message when an Inland BG (Bank Guarantee) is issued.
• The MD.DEAL,INLEND.MT767C version has been introduced to capture the information related to the IFN 767 COV message when an amendment is made.
• The MD.DEAL,INLEND.GTISS version has been introduced to generate the IFN 760 COV message when issuing an Inland BG.
• The MD.DEAL,INLEND.BBOND version has been introduced to generate the IFN 760 COV message when issuing a bid bond.
• The MD.DEAL,INLEND.PBOND version has been introduced to generate the IFN 760 COV message when issuing a performance bond.
• The MD.DEAL,INLEND.GT.AMD (Maintenance) version has been introduced to generate the IFN 767 COV message when amending a guarantee.