Variants and Supplementary Data

Variants

ISO 20022 messages aim at being global and catering for the business needs of all communities. In general, a particular community of users will not need all of the features defined in the global message. A 'variant' is a restricted version of a global message that fits the needs of a particular community.  Communities of users are invited to define their variants and have them published in the Catalogue of ISO 20022 messages together with the global messages.

To ensure that the variants are all expressed in a standard way, communities are invited to use the Master Message Template provided for each ISO 20022 message in the Full catalogue (via the hyperlink in column "T or P"). The Master Message Template is an 'intelligent' spreadsheet which contains all the elements of the global ISO 20022 message and helps communities to 'restrict' the message to the subset that is required to address their specific needs, while remaining in strict compliance with the original ISO 20022 message. For example, optional items can be removed or made mandatory, choices can be removed to keep no or fewer options, internal code lists can be reduced to the subset of codes that will actually be used, size of text fields can be reduced. A guide "How to customise a Master Message Template" is available.

Customised Message Templates can be submitted to the Registration Authority for publication. Please identify clearly the name of the user community and a link or e-mail address where more information, such as the full implementation guidelines, can be obtained.  

Supplementary Data

Some ISO 20022 messages include a 'SupplementaryData' component that can be used by communities of users to add information to a message that is not catered for by other components of the message. The information in the SupplementaryData component must be ISO 20022 compliant: it requires development of a compliant model and its components must be registered in the ISO 20022 Data Dictionary.

Use of the SupplementaryData component is subject to the approval of the SEG in charge of the message. Two use cases can be considered by the SEG:

- the need to transport the additional information is too urgent to undertake the formal ISO 20022 maintenance process. The additional information will be included in the SupplementaryData component until specific components are created within the body of the messages at the occasion of the next maintenance;

- the supplementary data is too specific or too volatile to deserve specific components within the body of the message itself. Use of the SupplementaryData will avoid impacting the entire user base.

The SupplementaryData component is made of two elements:

• an optional location element, allowing the supplementary data to be targeted at a specific point in the message, if required
• a mandatory structured data element, which allows the identification of a separate ISO 20022 compliant schema and the inclusion of data that conforms to that schema.

Request for use of the SupplementaryData must be introduced to the ISO 20022 Registration Authority using the usual Change Request template. The change request must completely detail the various items of additional information (description, data type, cardinality, related ISO 20022 Business Component), the targeted community of users and the reason why use of the SupplementaryData is deemed to be necessary for each of these items. It must also indicate which organisation will develop the ISO 20022 compliant model including the business data required in the SupplementaryData.

If use of the SupplementaryData is approved by the SEG, a candidate ISO 20022 model of the contents of the SupplementaryData component must be submitted to the ISO 20022 Registration Authority for compliance checking and registration. Registered SupplementaryData extensions will be published in the Catalogue of ISO 20022 messages. The use, processing or transmission of SupplementaryData extensions is to be preliminary agreed by all parties involved.