SWIFT handled on average over 34million messages a day last December and is used by many international banks to settle FX and cash positions daily.SWIFT has had a virtual a monopoly with global banks but has been facing increasing pressure from RIPPLE, the third most valuable cryptocurrency which is capitalized at over $13 Billion, and at one stage in 2018 had grown in value by a whopping 37,000% in 12 months. SWIFT is now using Blockchain technology and is working with the Singapore stock exchange, HSBC, Standard Chartered, DBS and Deutsche bank to create a more efficient way to handle share voting. The majority of publicly quoted shares are held in nominee accounts and proxy voting has become increasingly difficult and cumbersome.
The new e-voting service SWIFT are developing is designed to be faster and more transparent and reduce errors which in the past have proved to be very expensive. In 2016 it cost a US brokerage over $190million to compensate shareholders due to share proxy errors, as the current system is largely paper-based.
