JP Morgan has partnered with Swift in support of delivering open architecture electronic bank account management (eBAM) standards to its corporate clients.

With this partnership, JP Morgan adopts the ISO 20022 eBAM standard, which streamlines the management of global bank accounts, especially valuable to multinational businesses that are managing hundreds of accounts across several banking relationships.

Swift’s eBAM initiative establishes a standard, electronic format designed to facilitate the account management and audit activity between a financial institution and its clients. Clients will be able to open, maintain and close accounts electronically across its multiple banking partners, thereby reducing manual paper-based processes and improving security and controls through audit reporting of account management activity. Clients will benefit from faster processing, accelerated response times and increased visibility into banking processes.

JP Morgan has implemented eBAM for its clients that connect directly with the bank, thus eliminating the exchange of paper requests and replacing the need for ‘wet’ signatures.

Lloyd O’Connor, managing director of JP Morgan Treasury Services, said: “Swift’s eBAM initiative holds tremendous market value as a standard for JP Morgan, clients and vendors, and works best with industry security models such as Swift digital interoperability and open standards. JP Morgan sees eBAM as an important element to addressing the multi-bank interoperability needs of clients and we support the increased openness of the banking community toward bank agnostic channels.”

Luc Meurant, head of banking, supply chain and corporate markets at Swift, said: “eBAM is a addressing a business area where paper and fax still rule. Swift expects this solution to facilitate automation, efficiency and cost reduction, both for banks and corporates. In combination with personal digital signatures, it has the potential to change the future of corporate bank account and mandate management.”