Recour is the current accounts application of the National Bank of Belgium. Recour is also the central location for the settlement of the cash leg of securities transactions in NBB-SSS.

The application is characterised by centralisation of accounts management, providing the opportunity for the Bank’s services of entering and consulting their transactions. Payments transferred to other Belgian and foreign banks via electronic channels (SWIFT, CEC, TARGET2, interest, monetary reserves, etc.) are processed on a centralised basis within the Recour application. Recour processes payments in both the SWIFT and in the national and SEPA formats.

The general principle provides for Recour effecting payment orders only if sufficient funds are held in the account of the principal; if this is not the case, Recour places the payment order in a waiting file until sufficient funds are available in the account. Available funds include the amount of any line of credit granted on the basis of collateral deposited by the financial institution by way of guarantee. This mechanism is under the control of the Back Office service. A link between the two applications ensures automatic inclusion of the line of credit in available funds.

Recour is also responsible for the dispatch of incoming payments from TARGET2 (via Swift, where Swift is the traditional channel for the correspondent bank’s activities) and the CEC. Recour invoices costs to external clients and records various types of interest automatically. Finally, the application has modules at its disposal for automatically generating statements of account and information for the Bank’s central accounting service.

The various tasks of Recour

• in the settlement of operations relating to monetary policy:
  open market (tender), end-of-day facilities, minimum reserves of the indirect participants in TARGET2-BE.
  
• as settlement agent for the settlement of the cash leg of the securities transactions in de securities settlement system of the NBB (NBB-SSS).
  
• as banker for the services and branches of the Bank:
  Central Cash Office, Securities, Central Balance Sheet Office, local branches of the NBB, etc.
  
• as banker for the clients:
  credit institutions, investment firms, central banks outside the euro area, international organisations (IMF, BIS, ECB), central banks or governments of countries receiving financial assistance from Belgium, the Belgian State, the Post
  
• as banker, accountant and treasurer of the State:
  management of the Treasury via the WIROW FIN’Markets application, cash accounting, limited number of payments.