Most treasury teams believe they completed their ISO 20022 migration. They haven’t, at least not fully. The reality, of course, is more nuanced. New data requirements, stricter validation rules, and upcoming deadlines are already shifting a significant portion of the responsibility to corporates.
As requirements continue to evolve and responsibility increasingly shifts from banks to corporates, treasury and finance teams must move beyond basic compliance and focus on building sustainable, future-ready processes.
That was the central theme of TIS’s recent webinar, “ISO 20022 in Practice: How The Adecco Group Migrated at Scale with TIS,” featuring Amar Jyoti Borah, ITD Program Manager at The Adecco Group, alongside Mayank Randev, Director of Solution Engineering at TIS.
From Compliance Requirement to Strategic Opportunity
The webinar explored how The Adecco Group approached ISO 20022 not simply as a regulatory mandate, but as an opportunity to modernize treasury operations. Operating across more than 60 countries, managing over 1,400 bank accounts, and supporting a highly decentralized business structure, Adecco faced growing complexity in its payments and banking landscape. Disconnected systems, limited visibility into global cash positions, and increasing compliance requirements made transformation a strategic priority.
Rather than treating ISO 20022 as a standalone technical project, The Adecco Group used the migration to strengthen control, standardize processes, and improve visibility across the organization. The webinar highlighted how treasury leaders can leverage mandatory change initiatives to create broader operational improvements that deliver long-term value.
ISO 20022: The next deadline
By November 2026, structured addresses will become mandatory as part of payment information for all cross-border payments. What does this mean? In the past it was possible that the address data – be it for the payee or the payer as well as the banks – could be sent in one long string called the unstructured address. This needs to now move to a more structured way in terms of segregating the information like building name, street name, postcode, city, etc. From November, banks will be strict and enforce validation of these fields.
Challenges Corporates face with ISO 20022 Migration
With the cross-border payments standard now mandatory and a hard structured address deadline coming in November 2026, four challenges dominate the corporate migration.
The structured address cliff
From November 2026, SWIFT CBPR+ and SEPA payments carrying unstructured addresses are rejected outright, as hybrid formats stop being a safety net.
Fragmented, poor-quality data
Address and party data is spread across ERP, payroll, onboarding and legacy apps – every hand-off and mapping risk truncation and degradation.
ERP and treasury system lift
Systems must carry richer pain.001 v9 and camt.053 data and validate it early, without disrupting daily payment runs, across many entities.
Exceptions, delays & cost
Bad data drives repair queues, settlement delays, sanctions false positives and manual investigations, thereby pushing up operational costs.
Managing Complexity Without Overhauling Core Systems
One of the most valuable lessons shared during the session was Adecco’s approach to implementation. Instead of making extensive modifications to hundreds of internal systems, the company adopted a centralized transformation strategy using TIS as a translation and connectivity layer. Legacy payment files continue to flow into TIS, where they are converted into ISO 20022 formats while bank-specific requirements are managed centrally. This enabled Adecco to achieve compliance without disrupting existing business operations.
The scale of the project underscores the challenge many global organizations face. By implementing a centralized model, the organization was able to support ISO 20022 requirements while maintaining flexibility across its global operations.
Key Lessons for Treasury Teams
Throughout the discussion, the speakers emphasized the following areas treasury teams should focus on as their ISO 20022 journeys continue:
- Understand upcoming milestones
- Improve data quality
- Standardize payment information
- Ensure sustainable processes for the future.
The webinar also covered lessons learned from mapping exercises, data standardization efforts, and project execution across a complex international environment.
Most importantly, the conversation moved beyond compliance. The speakers explored how organizations can begin extracting value from the richer, structured data provided by ISO 20022 and what future-ready treasury workflows may look like as adoption matures.
Looking Beyond the Migration
A recurring message throughout the session was that ISO 20022 is not a one-time project. As validation rules become stricter and data requirements continue to expand, organizations that rely on temporary fixes or bank-side translation services may face increasing operational challenges in the years ahead. Treasury teams that invest in strong data foundations and scalable processes today will be better positioned to adapt to future regulatory and banking changes.
The Adecco Group’s experience demonstrates that ISO 20022 can serve as more than a compliance exercise. When approached strategically, it can become a catalyst for greater visibility, standardization, and efficiency across global treasury operations. For organizations still refining their migration strategies, the webinar provides a practical roadmap for turning regulatory requirements into long-term operational value.
Get full access to the entire webinar recording here.
