Reconciling Statements: MT940, MT950 and camt.053

Reconciliation of an MT940 starts with three control checks before any transaction is matched. First, the statement number in Field 28C must follow the previous statement without a gap, so statement 143 must follow statement 142. Second, the opening balance in Field 60a must equal the previous closing balance in Field 62a. Third, the calculated closing balance, opening plus credits minus debits, must equal Field 62a. Only when those three checks pass does the system match each Field 61 line to an expected entry in the accounting system, using the reference, the amount, the currency and the value date. A line for EUR 320,000 with reference pacs.008 DE 88412 and value date 3 November 2026 should match exactly one expected receipt. The MT950 reconciliation follows the same logic, but the matching is against the bank own nostro ledger rather than a customer accounting system. The receiving bank checks the sequence number, checks that the opening balance equals its own previous closing balance for that nostro account, and checks that the calculated closing balance equals Field 62a. Each Field 61 line is then matched to a payment the bank sent or received through that correspondent. A USD 950,000 debit on the MT950 should match a pacs.009 the bank sent to Singapore on the same value date. If the MT950 shows a debit the bank did not send, or omits a credit the bank expected, the nostro reconciliation team raises a break and contacts the correspondent bank the same day. The camt.053 Bank to Customer Statement is the ISO 20022 equivalent of the MT940, and it carries the same statement information in XML form with richer structured data. A camt.053 has a group header, a statement element with the account, the opening balance, the closing balance and the available balance, and a series of entry elements, each with an amount, a credit or debit indicator, a value date, a booking date and structured remittance information. The same EUR 320,000 credit that appears as a Field 61 line and a Field 86 narrative in an MT940 appears in a camt.053 as an entry with a structured creditor name, a structured invoice reference and a bank transaction code. The richer structure means fewer unmatched items. The three formats coexist because banks and corporates migrate at different speeds. A corporate that has used MT940 for twenty years may keep it for its main operating accounts, while a new subsidiary with a modern treasury system receives camt.053 for the same bank. A bank reconciling nostro accounts may receive MT950 from one correspondent and camt.053 from another, and its reconciliation system must handle both. The key discipline is the same in every format, namely match on reference, amount, currency and value date, check the balances, and investigate every break by age. A break that is one day old may be a timing difference, while a break that is thirty days old is a real error. Common breaks fall into a small set of patterns, and recognising them speeds up resolution. A timing break occurs when a payment is booked on 3 November in the bank system but on 4 November in the customer system, so the amounts match but the dates differ by one day. A value break occurs when the amounts differ, for example a EUR 320,000 payment arrives as EUR 319,850 after EUR 150 in charges, and the system must decide whether the difference is a charge or an error. A missing item break occurs when a line appears on the statement but not in the ledger, or the reverse, often because a payment was made by a different channel. A duplicate break occurs when the same reference appears twice. Each break needs an owner, an age and a resolution, and the reconciliation report must show the ageing every day.