The Swiss National Bank (SNB), as well as the banks and PostFinance are connected online to the SIC system. SIC maintains a settlement account for each participant. That account is balanced daily with its corresponding sight deposit account at the SNB.

The participating financial institutions may submit their payment orders to SIC, where they are verified using electronic signatures and where data entry authorization is monitored with the help of master bank data. The payment order structure is also verified, and whether this particular payment order has been submitted before. After these verifications have been successfully completed, the ordering bank receives either a confirmation or an error message. Following the positive cover-funds verification, the payment is irrevocably settled: the appropriate accounts of the involved financial institutions are either credited or debited. The credit receipt is forwarded along with an electronic signature to the receiving bank who, in turn, electronically confirms receipt.

The SNB continually monitors the cover-funds status of the participant and will, if necessary, provide liquidity to individual financial institutions. Inconsistencies in settlement or problems with individual participants can be addressed by the SNB, the supervising authority for the SIC system.

Real-time processing

Since SIC is an online system, transactions can be both submitted to and sent from SIC at any time. Incoming and outgoing payment orders are constantly monitored. The transactions are continually processed in real time – 24 hrs per day, according to the definitions of the SIC clearing day. This warrants that a financial institution can obtain current information about the status of their settlement account at any time.

The SIC clearing day

Within the parameters of the SIC clearing system a week is comprised of five days. Weekend transactions receive the settlement date of the following Monday. SIC is shut down between Saturday, 12:00 noon and Sunday 6:00 pm CET. Variations as well as bank holidays are listed annually in a circular newsletter.

A SIC clearing day lasts from approx. 4:40 pm of the previous day until 4:15 pm CET of the actual day and on weekends from Friday 4:40 pm until Monday, 4:15 pm CET.

Covered transactions only

For each individual transaction, the system verifies with the appropriate settlement account whether the funds are sufficient to settle the payment. Transactions are only executed if the necessary funds are available. Otherwise the payment is routed to a waitfile and kept pending until sufficient funds have become available through incoming payments, credits or a liquidity supply.

Moreover, SIC adheres to an additional rule of a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) adding to the reliability of the entire system: PvP – payment versus payment. A transaction is only executed when a payment has reached irrevocable status. Only then is the settling process triggered – immediately and irrevocably.

Technical security

IBASEC, an interbank system, ensures that up to two million and more transmissions valued at more than CHF 300 billion daily are executed securely and confidentially between the financial institutions. The primary requirements and expectations that are met with its unique hardware and software combination are the following:

• Messages must be transmitted unadulterated
• The message sender must be evident
• Sending and receiving of messages cannot be disputed
• Messages must be protected from unauthorized eavesdropping

Communications

The participating financial institutions are connected to the SIC system over Finance IPNet, a modern communications infrastructure. This is an Internet protocol (IP) based network.

Would you like more information or a personal consultation? Call +41 58 399 4747 or contact us using the online form.