Swift has opened a corporate services centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in a move to accelerate its growth strategy for Asia Pacific.

Headed by Michel Christophe, formerly group financial controller, the new centre offers services such as IT development, qualification testing, support, business operations, accounting and finance analysis and transactional functions. Working closely with teams in the US and Europe, the Malaysia office currently employs around 40 staff and is expected to grow to 100 over the next three years.

Francis Vanbever, chief financial officer, Swift says: “We recognise the shift of the global economic centre of gravity to the East. We have established this centre to reflect our belief in continued growth in the Asia Pacific region and to further strengthen our back-office operations to serve the global Swift community.

“We are pleased to select Kuala Lumpur as our new corporate services centre, based on its excellent balance between the quality of doing business and the cost of doing business. To come to this conclusion, we have considered many parameters such as the maturity of business establishment processes, support by the government, the availability of talent and the quality of office location.”

Alain Raes, chief executive, Asia Pacific and Emea, Swift, adds: “The new centre is an important milestone for our Asia Pacific business. We now have a stronger physical presence in the region to support our Asia Pacific strategic initiatives and to meet the growing needs of our customers and the industry.

“Swift has also been increasing its existing global marketing presence in Singapore as part of a corporate strategy to grow our footprint in Asia Pacific for the benefit of regional and global customers.”

Swift has opened three regional offices in Asia since 2005.