A high-tech Wrexham company has landed a three-year deal with the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services.
According to chief executive Paul Barlow, the contract was a massive coup for Disclosure Services who have put together a team of nine crack data analysts to provide the service to SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) which has its global headquarters just outside Brussels in Belgium.
SWIFT has created a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive secure information about financial transactions.
The scale of the operation is jaw-dropping.
They provide a link for more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories, who exchange an average of over 30 million messages per day
Last year that equated to facilitating more than 7.8 billion financial transactions.
Disclosure Services will be carrying out checks on the International Bank Account Number (IBAN) numbers, an internationally agreed system of identifying bank accounts across national borders.
The new team is based at the company’s £1.5 million HQ which was officially opened at Wrexham Technology Park in September last year by Welsh Economy and Transport Minister Ken Skates after the company moved from Gobowen, near Oswestry.
The core business of the rapidly-growing company is carrying out criminal record checks and the firm now employs around 50 people.
It has already 9,000 current clients, including some of the biggest corporate names and charities in the UK, and is signing up an average of 120 new customers every month.
Paul Barlow revealed the contract with SWIFT was 12 months in the making.
He said: “Securing this prestigious contract with SWIFT is a massive coup for Disclosure Services and, I believe, for the wider business community in Wrexham because it underlines that this is a fantastic town in which to do business.
“SWIFT is the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services.
“Each transaction is given a unique set of reference numbers and very often there are multiple parties to any one transaction.
“Our team at Disclosure Services have been brought together to make sure those reference numbers are maintained correctly.
“It will involve liaising with SWIFT’s internal departments and their larger customers worldwide to make sure that all of that information is up to date.
“That’s hugely important because there are consequences if a payment fails, whether that is paying for your holiday cottage in France or a multi-billion global deal – so getting payments right first time is absolutely critical. It’s a very specialist job.
“It’s very exciting for us at Disclosure Service to be given this level of trust to partner SWIFT.
“It’s a real vote of confidence that we’ve got the right infrastructure in place and the right people to do what they need us to do.”
Equally excited is Sam Latham, who leads the team of data analysts at Disclosure Services.
She said: “On a day to day basis, we will be reaching out to banks across the world. We have built a great team, all team members have at least five years’ experience as data analysts.
“Disclosure Services is a fantastic place to work and the potential for future growth is massive.”
