Moroccan Interbank Remote Clearing

System Overview

In 2003, Bank Al-Maghrib has set up, in consultation with the banking community, a national reference retail payment architecture, known as the Moroccan Interbank Remote Clearing System (SIMT) to ensure an electronic processing of mass instruments related to all cashless payment means, excluding bank cards transactions.

This market infrastructure supersedes the physical exchange of cashless payment instruments via clearing houses. It operates on the basis of a multilateral net clearing, with a deferred payment made once a day in "central bank money" in the participants’ central settlement accounts opened in the SRBM. (See detailed description of the SIMT on the corporate website of The Group for a Moroccan Interbank Clearing System (GSIMT)).

The SIMT AIMS at:

Ensuring electronic and secure interbank transactions

Reducing recovery periods

Centralizing the settlement balances

Improving cash management of its participants, and

Ensuring completely paperless exchange of values

Governance

The SIMT is managed by the Group for a Moroccan Interbank Clearing System (GSIMT), created under the legal form of an Economic Interest Group having particularly as missions:

to determine the payment instruments valid for clearing transactions

to fix the administrative, technical and financial modalities for organizing securities clearing

to define misconducts and the applicable financial penalties as well as the modalities of their implementation

The Group is administered by a board of directors consisting of ten participating members. The chairmanship of the Group is granted to one of the members for a period of one year. After the expiry of the mandate, the Presidency of the Board is held by a representative of another GSIMT administrator.

The Group is headed by a Chief Executive Officer appointed by contract for an indefinite period by the Board of Directors excluding the GSIMT members. His appointment is subject to prior approval of Bank Al-Maghrib. To perform his duties, the CEO is assisted by the Strategic, Technical, Audit and Remuneration Committees.

Participation to the GSIMT

The Statutes of GSIMT stipulate that any credit institution operating in Morocco, which manages of cashless payment means, and which usually sends and receives payment instruments valid for transiting through interbank circuits, is entitled to participate in the Moroccan Interbank Clearing System. This institution must adhere to the GSIMT by pledging to respect the statutory obligations and the technical, legal and financial requirements, particularly: