Purpose:
The BIC is a universal method of identifying financial institutions, in order to facilitate the automated processing of telecommunication
messages in banking and related financial environments.

Structure:
The BIC consists of eight or eleven contiguous characters comprised of the following components:

- Bank code: 4 alphanumeric characters. So far, the Registration Authority (i.e., SWIFT) has only used alphabetic characters.

- Country code: 2-letter country code as specifed in ISO 3166.

- Location code: 2 alphanumeric characters attributed by the Registration Authority to identify the location of the institution within the specified country.

- Branch code (optional): 3 alphanumeric characters identifying a branch or a department of the financial institution.