BANKING SERVICES

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) provides specialised banking services to the Australian Government, a range of government instrumentalities, and a number of overseas official institutions and central banks. The Bank's principal banking customer is the Australian Government and its departments.

The RBA provides a facility to the Australian Government that is used to manage a group of bank accounts, known as the Official Public Account (OPA) Group, the aggregate balance of which represents the Government's daily cash position. These banking arrangements include the provision of a term-deposit facility for the investment of surplus funds, the sweeping of balances to and from agencies' accounts held with transactional bankers, and access to a strictly limited overdraft facility. To assist in monetary policy and liquidity management, this service also includes the electronic collection of forecasting data and reporting on high-value transactions from agencies and transactional bankers. The Department of Finance and Deregulation manages this facility on behalf of the Australian Government.

The RBA also provides transactional banking facilities to various Australian Government agencies. The main transactional banking services offered by the RBA include:

• bank account facilities;
• deposit and cheque processing services;
• the processing and distribution of bulk electronic direct credit and direct debit transactions, including welfare, Medicare, salaries and vendor payments;
• overseas payment services including by cheque, electronic funds transfer (wires) or direct entry;
• various paper based and electronic collection services;
• document printing services where agencies can electronically request the RBA to issue cheques and electronic documents on their behalf; and
• cheque reconciliation, repository and verification services including a system that can assist in the identification of cheque fraud.

Access to these services is usually by way of ReserveLink (the RBA's PC-based, dial-up desktop banking package) or direct data link. Account and transaction enquiries are also available over an internet-based system known as RBANet. This system also provides on-line access to cheque and deposit images.