| Clearing
& Settlement
The Active-image Clearing and Settlement
(AiCS) application supports the clearing of inter-bank payment
transactions and the calculation of corresponding net settlement
positions. Typically, AiCS is installed in a central location,
as a service operated on behalf of all Commercial Banks
in a particular territory by a Central Bank or Banker’s
Association.
The financial instruments cleared are generally
electronic credits and debits and they are transmitted to
the AiCS system using communications links or magnetic media.
It also supports the clearing of paper-based inter-bank
transactions electronically at the code line level (referred
to subsequently as CLC or code line clearing).
After clearing, the settlement positions
of each of the member banks are typically transferred to
the Central Bank accounting system for posting.
The AiCS system contains access control
and security provisions.
System Benefits
AiCS offers many benefits:
- It is a modern application that operates on industry
standard PC hardware and software platforms.
- The system can be configured to operate in a devolved
or distributed architecture that allows regional nodes
or clearing centres to operate autonomously and to transfer
clearing sub-totals to a central node to derive the
overall country settlement positions.
- Multiple clearing and settlement sessions per day
are possible
- The clearing application caters for the return of
unpaid or unapplied transactions.
- It is complementary to the Aperta AiDPS
paper payments applications and allows concurrent clearing
of paper-based and electronic streams. This is especially
valuable in countries where a migration from paper-based
payments to EFT payments is taking place, as a result
of declining paper-transaction volumes or the introduction
of truncation.
- In particular, it can be used alongside the AiDPS
application at the central clearing site to perform
mixed paper-based and EFT clearing.
- It is complementary to the Aperta Archive (AiARC)
Active Image Archive (AiA) application, thus permitting
transactions processed through the system to be readily
retrieved by query facilities, or for long-term storage
on archival media.
- Interfaces are available to accept payment data from
other payment applications and to factor the results
from these into overall clearing and settlement.
- Extensive statistics and reporting facilities are
provided to allow the clearing operation to be managed
more easily and to provide information that can be analysed
to improve efficiency.
|
