An Account is the holding area where Fund balances for a Participant organisation can be maintained, for use against specific purposes in RTGS. The Accounts API enables Participants to retrieve various aspects of information associated with the Accounts that they are authorised to access. For example, a participant can:

• view a list of Accounts
• view details of a specific account
• view details of balance allocations associated to an account
• view details of reports associated to an account
• view a specific report associated to an account

This API is usable by any Participant organisation that has an RTGS Account with Bank of England irrespective of the Schemes they are subscribed to. The below image depicts the Account information that can retrieved from the Accounts API.

Account Details

Every active Participant organisation has one or more RTGS accounts. These can include General Settlement, CREST Settlement, REPO Liquidity etc. The Accounts API enabled participants to retrieve a filtered list of accounts. The list can be filtered by parameters such as:

• Participant ID
• Scheme code
• Account status code
• Account book code
• Account type code
• Account sub-type code

Based on the output of the list of accounts, the Accounts API can further be used to retrieve basic attributes of a single Account using the Account Id. The below image lists the various RTGS account types and sub-types applicable and the list of account attributes available for retrieval using the Accounts API.

Balance Allocation:

A Balance Allocation is a container which enables a portion of an account balance to be segregated so that it can be grouped into a settlement liquidity group to provide liquidity to back settlement in RTGS. Participants can use the Account Id to query the balance allocations of a specific Account that they are authorised to. The below image lists the various RTGS Balance Allocation types and sub-types available for retrieval using the Accounts API.

Account Reports

Participant organisations can also use Accounts API to retrieve a specific report or key information about a list of reports for a specific account that has already been generated in RTGS. The Accounts API provides parameters such as Account ID, Report Type Code and Value Date (past 30 days) to query various Accounts Reports listed in the below image.

Note: Participants can manage the generation of new Reports using the Report Preferences option in BERTI.

Filter Values:

The Accounts API has various fields that have a predefined set of values e.g. Account Type, Balance Allocation Status etc. To retrieve the possible values of all these fields Participants can use the Filter Values API Get Resource by passing the relevant Resource Name of the field.

For detailed information around fields that have a predefined set of values across all RTGS API please refer to the following page Filter Values API.

Accounts API Use Cases & Benefits

• Near real time retrieval of account balances
• Ability to manage liquidity more efficiently across different accounts
• Enables participant to build your own liquidity and account management dashboards
• Fuels innovation
• Promotes automation
• Reduction of manual effort
• Cost saving
• Integrated user experience

Supported Developer Toolkit:

Bank of England RTGS APIs will be supported by Swift Microgateway and Swift SDK.Both solutions, provided by Swift, offer access to the APIs. Bank of England hosts a reference implementation based on Swift Microgateway and we can help you start with the API connectivity using this option.

If you are already a user of any of these solutions, just download the API Specification and follow the Swift recommended steps to import it into your implementation.