National Payments Corporation of India chief Dilip Asbe joins Swift board

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) managing director and chief executive Dilip Asbe has been appointed an independent director on Swift’s new 15-member supervisory board, as the global financial messaging network moves to a new two-tier governance structure.

Alongside Asbe, Swift announced the appointments of senior executives from J.P. Morgan, HSBC, Bank of America, MUFG Bank and Standard Chartered on Thursday.

Swift stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication and is a members-owned cooperative that provides the messaging network and standards used by financial institutions to communicate securely on cross-border transactions.

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It does not hold funds or manage customer accounts, but connects more than 12,500 institutions across more than 200 countries and territories.

New board structure

The new structure replaces Swift’s earlier single board of directors with a supervisory board and management board, supported by a 25-member Swift Council. The change was approved by shareholders at the annual general meeting in June 2026, following amendments to Swift’s by-laws, and the new supervisory board held its first meeting on 6 October.

The supervisory board has 15 members, including an independent chair, four independent directors and 10 shareholder-affiliated directors, and is responsible for strategic oversight, including approving strategy and overseeing management, risk and controls.

Alongside Asbe, the new board includes Graeme Munro of J.P. Morgan as chair, Ahmed Abdelaal, group chief executive of Mashreq Bank; Arthur Ambrose of Citi; Manish Kohli, head of global payments solutions at HSBC; Mark Monaco, head of global payments solutions at Bank of America; Noritoshi Murakami, head of transaction banking at MUFG Bank; and Michael Spiegel, managing director of the corporate and investment bank at Standard Chartered.

The new board also includes independent directors Burkhard Balz, Inge Boets and Rima Qureshi.

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The governance overhaul also brings changes from the previous board. Swift’s 2024 board of directors had 25 members drawn from banks and financial-market infrastructure institutions, including Samantha Emery of Lloyds Banking Group, Marc De Rycke of Euroclear and Ole Matthiessen of Deutsche Bank.

Those three are not part of the new 15-member supervisory board. Other former directors, including Munro, Ambrose and Murakami, have moved into the new structure, providing continuity during the transition.

Future focus

The new board will help shape its strategy as Swift develops a blockchain-based ledger for tokenised assets, faster cross-border transaction services and technology capabilities around artificial intelligence, post-quantum computing and cybersecurity.

Asbe has headed NPCI since January 2018, after previously serving as its chief operating officer. He has played a key role in the development of IMPS (Immediate Payment Service), Aadhaar Enabled Payment System, RuPay, NETC-FASTag and Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Under his leadership, NPCI has also expanded subsidiaries focused on international payments, bill payments and emerging technologies.

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The appointment comes as NPCI expands India’s digital-payment infrastructure overseas through NPCI International Payments Ltd. UPI processed a record 24.51 billion transactions worth ₹29.82 trillion in August 2026, according to NPCI data. Government data released in August said UPI accounted for 49% of global real-time payment transaction volume in 2025, with Brazil at 14%, Thailand at 8%, China at 7% and South Korea at 3%.