ISO 21586:2020

INTERNATIONAL ISO
STANDARD 21586
First edition
2020-09
Reference data for financial
services — Specification for the
description of banking products or
services (BPoS)
Données de référence pour les services financiers — Spécification
pour la description de produits ou services bancaires (BPoS)
Reference number
©
ISO 2020
© ISO 2020
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ii © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms . 1
4 Principles . 4
4.1 General principles . 4
4.2 Concrete principles . 4
4.2.1 Types of key elements . 4
4.2.2 Description of multiple BPoS . 5
4.2.3 Sequence of key elements . 6
4.2.4 Descriptive style . 7
5 Level of conformity . 7
5.1 General . 7
5.2 Concrete conformity . 7
6 Key elements . 8
6.1 General . 8
6.2 Concrete key elements . 8
6.2.1 How can a BPoS be identified? . 8
6.2.2 How can the issuer of a BPoS be identified? .11
6.2.3 What are the credentials of a BPoS? . .15
6.2.4 What are the fundamental financial characteristics of a BPoS? .18
7 Requirements of representation .29
7.1 General .29
7.2 Logical tier .29
7.3 Physical tier .29
7.3.1 Principles .29
7.3.2 Key aspects for human reading .29
7.4 Version management .30
Annex A (informative) Method of recording versions of a description .32
Annex B (informative) Logical representation model of BPoS descriptions .33
Annex C (informative) Relationship between fiat currency, historical currency and
cryptocurrency .39
Annex D (informative) Related methodologies .40
Annex E (informative) An example of a BPoS description based on a credit card .41
Bibliography .50
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards
bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out
through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical
committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International
organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work.
ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of
electrotechnical standardization.
The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are
described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the
different types of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the
editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www .iso .org/ directives).
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of
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on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www .iso .org/ patents).
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expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the
World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see www .iso .org/
iso/ foreword .html.
This document was prepared by Technical. Committee ISO/TC 68, Financial services, Subcommittee
SC 8, Reference data for financial services.
Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found at www .iso .org/ members .html.
iv © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved

Introduction
Banking is an ancient industry. Until the middle of the last century, most banking services had been
simple and could be easily understood by common people. Services provided by different banks were
similar and did not require any specific explanation. Thus, standardizing the descriptions of banking
services was unnecessary at that time.
This situation gradually changed with the introduction of information technology into the banking
industry and the faster adoption of financial innovation. Since the beginning of this century, especially
when Fintech started to play a more important role in the banking industry, the situation has changed
dramatically. On the one hand, traditional banking services are becoming more integrated through
productization as the functions and behaviours of services are determined before they are provided
to customers. The establishment of product management functions in many banks can be deemed
circumstantial evidence of this development. On the other hand, the working of banking products or
services (BPoS, see 3.3) has become so complex that even the practitioner of its issuer cannot always
explain it thoroughly and unambiguously. Moreover, a growing number of institutions other than
traditional financial institutions are selling and servicing BPoS around the world. In some cases, these
institutions are not even supervised by financial supervisory authorities.
To compensate for the increase in complexity, many institutions have started to provide some
structured descriptions for their BPoS, often related to retail products. However, those descriptions are
so diverse amongst the different institutions that customers can barely perform a proper comparison,
even for similar products. Writing the description for BPoS can be a complex job for which only a small
number of experienced staff meet the requirements. Consequently, the standardization of the BPoS
descriptions has become more and more important.
At first glance, it seems relatively easy to establish a specification for the description of BPoS. However,
some issues arise when a specification requires several provisions of the required elements to be
combined.
This document is intended to solve the issues mentioned above. Key elements necessary to describe a
BPoS are defined. These elements are grouped into three categories: required, optional and voluntary.
Required elements: readers would not understand the BPoS correctly if these elements were described
incompletely or ambiguously.
Optional elements: readers would understand the BPoS more completely, clearly and accurately by
acquiring information from these elements.
Voluntary elements: readers would understand the peculiarities and extra benefits of the BPoS.
Required and optional elements are focused on answering four questions: ‘How to identify a BPoS’, ‘How
to identify the issuer of a BPoS’, ‘What are the credentials of a BPoS?’ and ‘What are the fundamental
financial characteristics of a BPoS?’. Voluntary elements are not listed as they are determined when the
description of a BPoS is being formulated so that innovation is not constricted. Figure 1 illustrates the
relationship between these elements.
Figure 1 — Logical categories and groups of elements
Ordinary customers as well as many employees of financial institutions have no interest in reading
or opportunity to read an ISO standard. How to choose appropriate elements might be a cumbersome
matter. Considering this, six templates are given, called the level of conformity. Figure 2 illustrates
the conceptual mapping on key elements for every level of conformity. If the concept of conformity is
introduced when this document is implemented, customers might easily judge which elements of a
BPoS have been described and practitioners might easily write a description of a BPoS by choosing a
suitable template.
Key
1 expanded 4 picked
2 picked and expanded 5 baseline
3 coincident 6 below baseline
Figure 2 — The relationship of six conformity level templates
After defining the necessary key elements to describe a BPoS, the next step is how to present them
in an appropriate fashion. In this document, this question is dealt with at two levels: a logical tier
and a physical tier. The organization of the information is considered the logical tier and deals with
the correctness of the contents of the BPoS description. Plain language should be used in describing
BPoS. Additionally, more
...