SWIFT / Learning brief
The BIC Directory and Bank Directory Plus
Your notes
In simple terms / 01
What this means in plain language
The BIC Directory is the authoritative list of Business Identifier Codes, while Bank Directory Plus adds national clearing codes, hierarchy, and legal-entity data. Payment operations use both to route and validate cross-border transfers.
To send a cross-border payment, a bank must know exactly which institution should receive it and how to reach that institution. Two SWIFTRef directories answer these questions. The BIC Directory is the authoritative list of every BIC (Business Identifier Code), the eight- or eleven-character code that identifies an institution and, optionally, one of its branches. It is the reference used to confirm that a code on a payment is real and active. Bank Directory Plus builds a fuller picture around each institution: it links a BIC to national clearing codes used by domestic systems, to a CHIPS UID (Clearing House Interbank Payments System Universal Identifier) for United States dollar clearing, to the institution's place in a corporate hierarchy, and to its LEI (Legal Entity Identifier). Payment operations teams use the BIC Directory to validate codes and Bank Directory Plus to translate between code systems and understand who ultimately owns a branch.
Complete lesson / 02
Understand the full idea, step by step
A courier will not deliver to "the tall building near the river." It needs a precise, agreed address that everyone in the chain reads the same way. Banks have the same problem across borders, and their answer is a short code that names an institution unambiguously. Two directories keep those codes honest — and connect them to the domestic identifiers a bank already knows.
BIC (Business Identifier Code) — the standard code that names a financial institution in international messaging
A BIC identifies an institution — and optionally a specific branch — in a form every counterparty reads the same way. It is eight characters for an institution or eleven when a branch is named, encoding the institution, the country, and a location. It is how a payment message says "send this to that bank" without ambiguity. Because Swift is the registration authority for the BIC standard, the authoritative list of these codes comes from source registrations, not second-hand copies.
What the BIC Directory establishes
The BIC Directory is the authoritative record of which codes exist, which institution each belongs to, and whether each is currently active. That authority matters because a code can look perfectly well-formed and still be invalid — decommissioned when institutions merged, or not connected for the messaging you intend. Validating a payment's BIC here confirms two things at once: the code is real, and it is usable for the purpose at hand. Operations teams treat it as the first checkpoint. If the receiving institution's code will not validate, the payment should stop before it is sent — not after a correspondent rejects it downstream and the money has to be recalled.
| BIC Directory | Bank Directory Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | Is this BIC real and active? | How else is this institution identified, and where does it sit? |
| Core content | The authoritative list of BICs and their status | National clearing codes, CHIPS UID, hierarchy, LEI |
| Used mainly for | Validating the receiving institution up front | Translating codes and understanding the entity behind them |
What Bank Directory Plus adds around each institution
- National clearing codes
- Links a BIC to domestic identifiers — sort codes, routing numbers — so a team can translate between a domestic and an international code
- CHIPS UID
- The Clearing House Interbank Payments System Universal Identifier used in United States dollar clearing
- Corporate hierarchy
- Which branches belong to which institution, and which institution belongs to which parent group
- LEI
- The Legal Entity Identifier — a separate global code for the legal entity itself
How Maya uses both together
- INSTRUCTION
The instruction arrives with a national clearing code for the beneficiary bank and no BIC.
- VALIDATION
Bank Directory Plus translates that clearing code to the matching BIC and confirms both identifiers point to the same institution.
- VALIDATION
Bank Alfa validates that derived BIC against the BIC Directory to confirm it is real and active before building the cross-border message.
- MESSAGE
With a confirmed, consistent identifier, Bank Alfa sends the onward payment — a mismatch that would have caused a downstream reject was caught at the start.
How can a code be well-formed and still wrong?
Format rules only prove a code has the right shape and character positions. They cannot know that the institution behind it merged last year and its old code was retired, or that the code exists but is not connected for the route you need. Only a maintained directory carries that living status. This is why validation checks the code against the register, not just against the format.
STRICTLY SPEAKING
Strictly speaking, both directories describe institutions and codes, not individual customer accounts, and they refresh on a schedule. The hierarchy and LEI data help investigation — a compliance analyst can trace a branch up to its parent group to understand who is really behind a payment — but account-level verification and sanctions screening stay as separate controls layered on top. The directories tell you the institution is real and how it is identified; they do not tell you the account is open or the party is cleared.
FOR NOW, REMEMBER
- The BIC Directory is the authoritative record of which BICs exist, whose they are, and whether they are active — the first validation checkpoint.
- Bank Directory Plus surrounds each institution with national clearing codes, the CHIPS UID, corporate hierarchy, and the LEI.
- Together they let a team translate a domestic code to a BIC, confirm both point to one institution, and understand the entity behind a payment.
- Both describe institutions and codes, not customer accounts; account checks and screening remain separate controls.
TRY IT YOURSELF
A payment arrives with both a national clearing code and a BIC for the beneficiary bank. Bank Directory Plus shows the two identifiers belong to different institutions. What should happen?
We derived a BIC from a national code. Many payments instead arrive with a full account number — an IBAN — and no institution code at all. Next: deriving the BIC from the IBAN, and the directories that say where to settle and whether a bank is even reachable.
KEEP GOINGKey takeaways / 03
Three things to remember
- 01
The BIC Directory is the authoritative list of active Business Identifier Codes.
- 02
Bank Directory Plus adds clearing codes, hierarchy, CHIPS UIDs, and LEIs.
- 03
Together they let operations validate a code and route across code systems.
Practical use cases / 04
Where you would use this
A payment engine checks the BIC Directory to confirm a beneficiary bank's code is valid and active before sending.
An operations team uses Bank Directory Plus to map a national sort code to the correct BIC for a cross-border leg.
A compliance analyst uses hierarchy and LEI data to identify the parent group behind a branch during a review.
Worked example / 05
Put the idea into a real situation
Illustrative example: a fictional payment to a beneficiary at Northwind Bank, branch code NRTHGB2LXXX, is captured with a UK national sort code of 20-30-40. The engine looks up the sort code in Bank Directory Plus, confirms it maps to the same institution as the entered BIC, and verifies in the BIC Directory that NRTHGB2LXXX is active. Both checks pass in under 1 second, so the payment proceeds without a manual repair.
Evidence & review / 07
Evidence & review
Swift's BIC Directory and Bank Directory Plus reference products, and their use in validating and translating institution identifiers for cross-border payments.
What this brief simplifies: BIC structure and directory contents are described at teaching depth; the ISO 20022/ISO 9362 standard detail and the full field set of Bank Directory Plus are larger than shown. No version-dependent counts are quoted.
Sources for this brief2
- Market practice
SwiftRef reference data services ↗ — Swift
Used for public summaries of the SwiftRef directories and their delivery through files, a web application, and application programming interfaces.
- Simplified educational illustration
Payments Signal editorial teaching models — Payments Signal
Used wherever diagrams, scenarios, figures, or example values are didactic constructions rather than sourced facts; every such use carries a simplifications disclosure. All people, companies, banks, and list entries in examples are fictional.