SWIFT has appointed Cheri McGuire as Chief Technology Officer, a cybersecurity specialist with experience in banking, big tech, and Homeland Security.
Cheri McGuire, the former group chief information security officer of Standard Chartered, will join the banking co-operative as the cross-border remittance ecosystem grows more competitive than ever with the emergence of blockchain solutions.
At Standard Chartered, McGuire established a new global cyber risk management function across 60 countries and 85,000 employees from 2016 to 2019. Prior to that, she led cybersecurity policy and programs at Microsoft and security vendor Symantec.
Her career includes public service as the director of the National Cybersecurity Division and US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) within the US Department of Homeland Security.
Cheri McGuire will report directly to Javier Pérez-Tasso, Chief Executive Officer at SWIFT: “I was immediately impressed both by Cheri’s extensive knowledge in the cyber domain but also her experience and strategic understanding of technology transformation taking place within the financial services industry.
“I am confident in her leadership capabilities to drive our own technology platform transformation as we continue to execute on our strategy, while also ensuring high levels of trust within the community on operational excellence, business continuity and risk and control”, said the SWIFT chief executive.
SWIFT is at a pivotal moment as it re-tools its cross-border messaging infrastructure to take on new challenges in digital payments. The cooperative has announced low-value cross-border payments in seconds last week, using its latest solution, SWIFT Go.
Seven global banks, which collectively handle 33 million low-value cross-border payments per year, have already gone live with SWIFT Go, a key building block in the cooperative’s strategy to enable instant and frictionless cross-border transactions.
SWIFT is stepping up as countless payments startups have developed solutions that solve the most troublesome issues in cross-border payments, including firms emerging from blockchain space.
Go uses tighter service level agreements between institutions and pre-validation of data to allow banks to provide their end customers a fast and predictable payments experience with upfront visibility on processing times and costs. SWIFT’s network connects more than 11,000 institutions and 4 billion accounts across 200 countries worldwide.
Javier Pérez-Tasso became Chief Executive Officer at SWIFT in 2019 amid the replacement of Gottfried Leibbrandt. Pérez-Tasso was the CEO for the Americas and UK at the time.
Pérez-Tasso is with the company since 1995 and knows all the critical functions of the company which has helped him to steer the company in the right direction.
