Investigation: the wrong intermediary

A wrong intermediary investigation starts when a payment was sent through a bank that should not have been in the chain, and the payment is now delayed, charged, or held, because the wrong bank applied its own rules, its own charges, or its own compliance screening to a payment it should never have touched. The intermediary is the bank between the debtor bank and the creditor bank that forwards the payment, and it is named in field 56a in MT, or in the intermediary agent fields in ISO 20022, and when the wrong intermediary is named, the payment goes to the wrong place, and every hour it spends there is an hour the beneficiary waits. Source: SWIFT CBPR+ usage guidelines; ISO 20022 pacs.008 intermediary agent fields; Paiementor articles on field 56a. Why the wrong intermediary is named is usually a stale standing settlement instruction, a manual error, or a routing table that was not updated when a correspondent relationship changed. A bank may have stopped using a correspondent in New York and moved to a correspondent in London, but the SSI still names New York, so every payment to that corridor goes to a bank that no longer expects it, and the New York bank either returns it, forwards it with a charge, or holds it for investigation. A manual error is simpler: an operator typed the wrong BIC, and the payment went to a bank with a similar name, which is why the BIC must be validated against the directory before the payment is sent, not after it is lost. The parties are the debtor bank, which named the intermediary, the wrong intermediary, which received a payment it did not expect, the correct intermediary, which should have received it, and the creditor bank, which is waiting for it. The enquiry messages are pacs.028 to ask the wrong intermediary what it did with the payment, and in the legacy MT world MT199 to ask the same question in free format, and MT192 to request cancellation if the payment must be stopped and resent. The answer is pacs.002, which states whether the payment was received, forwarded, returned or held, and the investigation must get that answer before it can decide whether to wait, to recall, or to resend. How the investigation runs is shown by a worked example. The New York bank receives the pacs.008 on Monday, does not recognise the payment, holds it for investigation, and deducts a USD 25 handling charge. On Tuesday the Frankfurt bank sends pacs.028 to New York, learns the payment is held, and asks New York to return it, which New York does on Wednesday, less the USD 25 charge. The Frankfurt bank resends the payment through London on Wednesday, the beneficiary is credited on Thursday, three days late, and the Frankfurt bank absorbs the USD 25 charge and the interest compensation, because the error was its stale SSI, not the customer fault. On success the payment is returned or forwarded, the correct route is used, the beneficiary is credited, and the SSI is corrected so the same error does not happen again. On failure the wrong intermediary forwards the payment to a further wrong bank, and the payment travels further from its intended route, so the investigation must stop the payment as soon as the error is known, with a recall or a stop request, rather than waiting for it to arrive. The most expensive failure is a payment that the wrong intermediary credits to the wrong beneficiary, because the recovery is then a recall that needs the beneficiary agreement, and the money may never come back. The data the investigation needs is the intermediary BIC as sent, the correct intermediary BIC, the SSI that was used, the UETR, the amount and currency, and the charges deducted by the wrong intermediary. The SSI is the field that matters most, because a stale SSI will send every payment on that corridor to the wrong bank, not just one, and the investigation must check whether other payments used the same SSI, because a single wrong payment is an error, but ten wrong payments are a systemic failure. A BA must require the SSI to be reviewed regularly, the routing table to be validated against the SSI, and the BIC to be checked against the directory before sending. Edge cases show the depth. A wrong intermediary that is also a correspondent of the creditor bank may forward the payment correctly, but with an extra charge and a delay, so the payment arrives but the beneficiary receives less, and the investigation becomes a charges discrepancy as well as a routing error. A wrong intermediary in a sanctioned jurisdiction can create a compliance problem, because the payment has touched a bank it should never have touched, and the compliance team must review it even after the money is recovered. A wrong intermediary that holds the payment for screening must be asked to release it or return it, and the bank must not assume it will do either without being asked. The effect on the bank is a routing error that costs charges, interest compensation and customer trust, and a SSI review that should have happened before the payment was sent. The effect on the customer is a payment that is days late, through no fault of their own, and a supplier who may charge a late fee. The effect on operations is a queue of payments that went to the wrong bank, each needing a pacs.028, a return or a forward, and a SSI correction, and a manager who can see which corridors have the most routing errors and why. What a BA, PO or SME must understand is that the intermediary is chosen by the SSI and the routing table, and a wrong intermediary is a data failure, not a system failure. The requirement must name the SSI maintenance process, the routing validation, the BIC check, the pacs.028 flow and the correction of the SSI after the investigation. The test is to take one payment that went to the wrong intermediary, find the SSI that sent it there, correct the SSI, and check that the next payment on the same corridor goes to the right bank, because if the SSI is not corrected, the investigation will repeat. Further reading: SWIFT CBPR+ usage guidelines; Paiementor articles on field 56a and correspondent selection; Wolfsberg Correspondent Banking Principles. Last reviewed 7 November 2026.