Swift has moved to a two tier governance structure, with J.P. Morgan’s Graeme Munro chairing the new Supervisory Board that oversees management of the cooperative. Shareholders approved the board at the June 2026 annual general meeting, and it met for the first time on 6 October.
The board has 15 members: the chair, four independent non executive directors and ten shareholder directors. Among the bank seats are Manish Kohli, Head of Global Payments Solutions at HSBC; Mark Monaco, Head of Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America; Noritoshi Murakami, Head of the Transaction Banking Division at MUFG Bank; Arthur Ambrose, Head of Services Operations at Citi; and Francisco Aristeguieta, International and Global Transaction Banking Executive at Scotiabank. Mashreq Group CEO Ahmed Abdelaal, Société Générale Group COO Laura Mather, Bank of China (Hong Kong) chief executive Yu Sun, BNP Paribas Securities Services executive chairman Patrick Colle and Standard Chartered’s Michael Spiegel complete the shareholder group.
The independent directors are Dilip Asbe, Burkhard Balz, Inge Boets and Rima Qureshi. They will chair the governance and nomination, audit and finance, risk, and technology and production committees. A Management Board led by chief executive Javier Pérez-Tasso and a 25 member Swift Council sit alongside the new board.
Swift said the structure follows international practice for systemically important financial infrastructures. The board will guide strategy, including Swift’s blockchain based ledger for tokenised assets, its international payment services and its response to post quantum and AI related technology shifts. “This is a milestone moment for Swift,” Munro said.
Digital Trade Outlook’s View: Swift’s Board Is Now Run by Its Biggest Payments Users
Half of the ten shareholder seats go to executives who run payments and transaction banking businesses at HSBC, Bank of America, MUFG, Citi and Scotiabank. These are the banks with the most to gain from a faster Swift and the most to lose if its shared ledger competes with their own platforms. That tension will shape how quickly the tokenised asset ledger moves. Mashreq’s seat also puts a Gulf bank in the room where Swift’s strategy is set.
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