Claudia Swendseid, Senior Vice President with the Minneapolis Fed and Vice Chair of X9 Announces Retirement

Press Release: Claudia Swendseid, vice chair of X9’s Board, announces retirement from Minneapolis Fed

Date: October 3, 2016
To: Bank Staff
From: Neel Kashkari and Jim Lyon
Subject: Retirement – Claudia Swendseid

After a long and distinguished career, Claudia Swendseid has informed us of her decision to retire early next year.

Claudia joined the Bank in 1985 as a senior marketing research analyst in Business Development. During her career she has worked in and managed most of the Bank’s financial services and support areas. She was named Assistant Vice President in 1989, Vice President in 1996 and Senior Vice President in 2000.

Over the last 15 years, Claudia has twice led the Financial Services Policy Committee (FSPC) Support Office, first for Gary Stern and then for Narayana Kocherlakota. Each of these periods represented a time of momentous change for the FSPC and the System’s financial services. The first period, during the early to mid-2000s, was the time of check consolidation and the beginning of the transition of priced services legacy mainframe applications to distributed platforms. The second period included the development of the strategic planning effort on which the Strategies for Improving the U.S. Payments System (SIPS) initiative is based. Claudia’s organization skills, managerial talents and tireless work ethic were evident throughout both of these periods in the establishment, execution and ultimately the hand off of the FSPC Support Office responsibilities.

In the area of financial institution outreach and payment standards, Claudia’s contributions to the Fed and payments industry more broadly have been enormous. She is a nationally recognized expert on payment standards, emerging payment technologies and fraud trends. In recent years, Claudia has represented the Federal Reserve on the X9 Board of Directors, serving as Vice Chair. She has also played a leadership role on behalf of the System in industry efforts related to B2B payments, remittance processing and electronic invoice processing.

Claudia has played a key role on the FRFS’ Industry Relations Team; serving as the relationship manager to the ABA and the ICBA and several business practitioner associations. She has traveled extensively conducting numerous presentations at external and internal events, meetings, and national and district conferences.

Within the Bank, Claudia has been a valued colleague on the Management Committee in helping to shape the Bank’s strategic direction and managing the Bank’s ongoing responsibilities. For  innumerable staff, Claudia has been a role model, a mentor and trusted advisor.

In light of Claudia’s retirement, we will make the following organizational changes effective January 1, 2017: Guy Berg, Vice President for the Payments, Standards and Outreach Office will report to First Vice President Jim Lyon; Barb Pfeffer, Vice President for the Customer Contact Center will report to Senior Vice President Duane Carter; and Michelle Brunn, Vice President for the Program Assurance Function will report to Senior Vice President Niel Willardson.

Please join us in wishing Claudia all the best in her retirement. We will provide additional details on plans to recognize Claudia’s career and many contributions to the Bank and the System in the near future.