How Desjardins got ready for ISO 20022 Exceptions & Investigations

Desjardins, the largest cooperative financial group in Canada, recently completed one of the most comprehensive ISO 20022 native migrations in the country. With more than 10 million members and clients across personal, business, and institutional segments, it operates as a cooperative financial group, a model rooted in community presence, long-term governance, and a responsibility to help members achieve financial autonomy. 

Louis-Étienne Bérubé, Senior Director, Personal and Corporate Payments at Desjardins, says the financial institution set its ISO 20022 objective in 2022 with a clear ambition: be fully aligned with the November 2025 deadlines.

This meant getting ready for the end of coexistence between MT messages and MX with a modern, ISO-native infrastructure to handle high value payment flows.  

After rebuilding the core payments platform, it became clear that the services surrounding it, including Exceptions and Investigation (E&I), needed to be native too. The existing investigations tool built on legacy infrastructure couldn’t meet the new data, messaging and operational requirements.  

To understand how Desjardins modernized its E&I alongside the other core transformation, we spoke to Louis about the transformation to operating end-to-end in ISO 20022 with a modern, scalable foundation. 

“With our internal teams fully engaged on the core transformation, the support from RedCompass Labs was key. It helped us rapidly define business requirements, assess potential partners, and validate solution options for the replacement of our obsolete E&I platform all without slowing down the primary modernization program.“

Kellie Johnson: What proved to be the biggest challenges along the way, and how did you make sure you were taking the right approach to meet the ISO 20022 requirements? 

Louis-Étienne Bérubé: One of the biggest challenges was the breadth of impact across systems, processes, and data. Especially while our teams were fully dedicated to the multi-year modernization of our core banking and international/high value payment services.   

Because the same specialists were needed for both initiatives, we quickly faced capacity constraints. E&I is tightly connected to these payment flows, so modernizing it could not be postponed or treated as a separate effort.  

To help address this, RedCompass Labs supported us through a FastStart assessment that allowed us to move forward in parallel without overloading our teams. This helped us identify potential solution partners, define business requirements, and conduct a complete analysis of the replacement options for our obsolete investigation tool.  

It meant our internal teams could stay focused on the core transformation while still making meaningful progress on E&I.   

By integrating RedCompass Labs’ FastStart assessment and findings into our broader program, we were able to manage capacity more effectively, reduce delivery risk, and ensure that the new E&I platform would support ISO 20022 natively and be ready for the November 2025 industry cutoff.   

This approach also ensured that E&I supported, rather than lagged behind, our core banking modernization. 

KJ: Looking back on your program, which skills or capabilities were most critical to successfully preparing for the ISO 20022 migration? 

LEB: There were three key elements: 

1. Deep payments and data expertise
Our goal was to build an ISO 20022-native ecosystem, not simply rely on translation. So, we needed strong internal expertise in payment flows, structured data, and cross border standards. This capability was essential to design solutions that scale with the industry and avoid generating technical debt. And when specialized expertise was needed at key moments, RedCompass Labs was able to step in and provide targeted support, helping us validate assumptions and accelerate certain phases of the project.

2. Strong cross-functional collaboration
The same teams responsible for modernizing the core banking and high-value payment services were also needed to modernize E&I.  Coordinating business, technology, and operations under a unified governance model allowed us to stay aligned despite capacity constraints.

3. The ability to accelerate analysis and decision making
With our internal teams fully engaged on the core transformation, the support from RedCompass Labs was key. It helped us rapidly define business requirements, assess potential partners, and validate solution options for the replacement of our obsolete E&I platform all without slowing down the primary modernization program. Together, these capabilities enabled Desjardins to deliver our vision of adopting ISO 20022 natively, maintain delivery momentum, and ensuring readiness for the industry changes. 

KJ: What “ah-ha” moments were uncovered during the initial readiness assessment?  

LEB: The main one came when we fully realized the scale of change our operations teams would face. They were already preparing to adopt a new payments platform as part of our core modernization, and on top of that, we were fundamentally transforming how investigations are handled. This meant we were introducing change and risk across the entire value chain at the same time. 

What made the difference was the leadership, commitment, and determination of all the teams involved. Once everyone recognized the magnitude of the transformation, there was a strong collective effort to align, collaborate, and make it work.  

That mindset was essential to managing the operational impact and ensuring a smooth transition to an ISO 20022-native E&I process. 

KJ: Many FIs have decided to use file translation tools as a short-term solution for migration, but Desjardins didn’t. How did you approach it differently?  

LEB: For us, the timing was simply right. Our systems already needed to be modernized ISO 20022 or not. Since we had to replace core components of our high value payments ecosystem, choosing temporary translation layers would have added complexity without solving the underlying issues. 

More importantly, ISO 20022 is much more than a technical standard for Desjardins. It represents a structural transformation in the way payments operate. The enriched and structured data model strengthens interoperability, reduces rejects, and supports far greater automation and improved fraud detection. It also lays the foundation for innovation.  

Because of this, it made little sense to adopt ISO 20022 indirectly through translators. We chose to modernize directly on ISO-native platforms and to work with partners who fully support the standard end-to-end. This ensured data quality, reduced technical debt, and aligned our E&I capabilities with the broader modernization of our core payments ecosystem. 

In short, modernization was inevitable, and adopting ISO 20022 natively allowed us to upgrade in a way that will create long-term value. 

KJ: What are the risks of using translators long-term or without a clear view of the impacts?  

LEB: In our view, there are three big risks: 

1. Losing the real value of ISO 20022
In our view, this is the biggest. The industry keeps saying that data is the new gold, and it’s true, financial institutions that want to stay competitive need to capitalize on richer, more structured information.  When you rely on translators, you flatten or lose part of that data. You don’t get the full benefit of automation, analytics, fraud monitoring, or better straight-through processing. In other words, you’re sitting on a gold mine but only digging the surface.

2. Long-term operational and technical debt
This is most prevalent when you create translation layers. Every time you introduce a converter, you add latency, complexity, and new failure points. I call it my big, overcooked spaghetti bowl, over time it becomes harder to maintain, harder to troubleshoot, and harder to evolve as the standards change. You end up paying the cost of modernization twice.

3. Slowing your ability to innovate
The payments industry is moving to real-time, API-driven experiences and improved cross-border flows. If your systems don’t produce ISO 20022 data natively, you’re always one step behind. You can’t fully align with partners, you can’t automate as much as you’d like, and you miss opportunities to build new services on top of high-quality data. So for us, using translators long-term would have limited our potential. Modernizing natively in ISO 20022 was the only path that supported where we want to go as an institution. 

KJ: What would your advice be to a financial institution who hasn’t begun their migration, especially for E&I ahead of the November 2026 standards release? 

LEB: I would say, take a step back and look at the entire forest not just the E&I tree. 

What we’ve learned is that ISO 20022 is not a one-time migration. In 2025, the coexistence period ended. This year, hybrid addresses and E&I messages are changing. In the years ahead, it will be something else.  

ISO didn’t evolve much in recent years, so that the industry could focus on the migration, but that stability is ending. A new wave of enhancements is coming. They’re good for the industry they’re designed to improve automation, transparency, interoperability, and ultimately deliver more value to clients. 

That’s why focusing only on E&I can be misleading. Financial institutions need to understand the cumulative effect of what’s coming and treat ISO 20022 as an ongoing transformation, not a series of isolated compliance tasks.  

When you see the full picture, it becomes clear that these changes are deeply transversal: they touch operations, technology, data governance, risk, and client-facing processes. 

KJ: As we approach another milestone year in ISO 20022 migration and transformation, what’s next for Desjardins? 

LEB: For high-value payments, our next step is to stabilize the ecosystem we’ve just modernized. Meeting the November standards required significant work in a short timeframe, and like many institutions, we had to make trade offs and create some technical debt to get there on time. Our focus now is to reinforce those foundations and ensure our ISO-native platforms operate at full capacity. 

Once stability is in place, we will be able to fully capitalize on the value of ISO 20022: richer data, more automation, stronger fraud detection, and a better end-to-end experience for our members. Having modernized the back end, we can now accelerate on the front-end simplifying journeys, improving transparency, and bringing more visible value to clients. 

The next major chapter will be domestic and low value payments. Everything we have achieved on high value rails will need to be repeated. The industry is moving fast, new rails are emerging, competition is intensifying, and client expectations are rising. This is why maintaining a holistic, long-term view is critical. 

“In short, we will be modernizing for many years ahead. The payments industry is in full evolution, and the institutions that thrive will be those that modernize faster, stay aligned with industry change, and surround themselves with people who have the right expertise and experience to accelerate the journey.”

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We bring deep, practical expertise to help you navigate the technical and regulatory requirements, as well as the operational, data, and change-management challenges inherent in large-scale payment transformations.

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