Correspondent Banks

Correspondent banks involved in most cross-border funds transfers via SWIFT. Banks (respondents) open accounts in large financial institutions to settle the payments between each other. Those accounts called Nostro.

Standard Settlement Instructions (SSI) – default instructions of a bank or other financial institution for the payments and delivery of securities. In cross-border payments usually, it is a list of nostro accounts in correspondent banks.

While normally Standard Settlement Instructions are stored in a SWIFTRef database, and most of the banks involved in cross-border payments can access this information, sometimes it is useful to check them yourself in advance. Examples of such situations:

You would like to understand if the bank can receive a payment in a specific currency.
To check if the beneficiary’s bank has a common correspondent bank with the sender’s bank to speed up the payment.
To check if there are options available for correspondent banks and manually place a ‘good’ one.

The largest correspondent banks for USD currency are:

JPMorgan Chase Bank National Association
Citibank NA
The Bank of New York Mellon
Standard Chartered Bank
Wells Fargo Bank National Association

How Do I Find a Correspondent Bank Online?

There are 3 ways how to get a list of correspondents for a specific bank including their SWIFT codes:

Ask customer service of the bank by phone or visit the branch.
Look at the official web site of the bank or search for ‘standard settlement instructions %bank name%’ or ‘correspondent banks %currency% %bank name%’.
If you want to save up time, you can also get this information here on TrackMySwift. Search your bank by swift/bic code in the form above. Order the information for 3 currencies by $7.49. We rely on the up-to-date database of a large financial data provider.

Take a look at our examples of MT103 forms. It contains structured fields with information about sender, beneficiary, banks involved, amount, currency, value and some other. You can find here a full description of MT103 fields.

Each MT103 message can be identified by UETR code or/and Sender’s Reference Number.

UETR – Unique End-to-End Transaction Reference, 36-character alphanumeric code that serves as a unique identifier for a specific payment transaction. Here is an example of UETR code: de2da6c9-18be-48d4-8053-867ed90a316a.

You will need the MT103 form and UETR code to track the status of your SWIFT payment or when the beneficiary contacts their bank to expedite compliance procedures.

How Standard Settlement Instructions Look Like?

Usually, it is a list of currencies, correspondent banks and account numbers in those banks. Here is an example for Hipotekarna Banka:

Some of the banks share the list of correspondent banks on their official web sites. For example, Kreissparkasse Esslingen-Nuertingen or RAIFFEISENLANDESBANK.

Find Your Bank by Country and Get a List of Correspondent Banks

We understand that finding a bank by a SWIFT/BIC code or a name could be challenging. You can select a country below and find a bank in the list. After that you will be able to get its correspondents banks and other useful information related to SWIFT money transfers.