Scope of our banking services
Our products and services are summarised in the infographic below: Treasury, asset management and advisory, in line with the Banking Department’s organisation.
To provide them, BIS Banking operates from three interlinked dealing rooms, located in Basel and in our regional offices in Hong Kong SAR and Mexico City.
Jointly, the three locations offer services on a near 24-hour basis to all BIS clients, helping maintain close contact with liquidity and reserve managers, as well as other counterparties across the globe.
As a rule, we do not accept deposits from, or provide financial services to, private individuals or corporate entities.
Products and services
Treasury
- Money market products
- Tradable investment instruments
- Foreign exchange and gold services
- Other financial services
On-balance sheet
Advisory
- Knowledge-sharing
- Customised studies
- Research
Asset management
- Investment pools
- Dedicated mandates
Off-balance sheet
What we offer in detail
Explore each of the BIS Banking products and services available to central banks, monetary authorities and international organisations.
The BIS Treasury offers money market placements, such as sight/notice accounts and fixed-term deposits, and tradable instruments in maturities ranging from one week to five years. Tradable instruments take the form of fixed rate investments with maturity up to one year and medium-term instruments with maturity above one year.
These products are collectively known as the Bank’s borrowed funds business. They are designed and priced to offer returns that are competitive with those of comparable sovereign debt instruments, while providing the high credit quality and liquidity required by the Bank’s reserve management clients.
The Bank conducts FX trades on behalf of our central bank customers, including spot transactions, swaps, outright forwards, options and so-called dual currency deposits. We have developed advanced electronic FX trading capabilities, such as the Bank’s e-FX price aggregator platform, to help customers implement large spot and FX swap trades at competitive rates.
The BIS also provides comprehensive gold-related services that include spot trading as well as outright forwards, swaps and options. Other gold services comprise sight accounts, fixed-term and dual currency deposits as well as physical services, such as quality upgrading, refining and location exchange.
Complementing the Treasury’s deposit business, and leveraging the existing own funds management infrastructure, the Bank offers two types of fee-based third-party asset management products:
- dedicated mandates tailored to clients’ individual requirements
- open-ended fund structures – BIS Investment Pools (BISIPs) – that allow groups of BIS customers to invest in a common pool of reserve assets.
In addition to offering investments in core USD- and EUR denominated sovereign bonds, the BISIP structure is a key tool to accommodate central bank interest in more diversified FX reserve portfolios in a cost-efficient way.
The BIS also offers a range of other financial services, including short-term liquidity facilities through which central banks can draw against high-quality collateral. Such liquidity facilities add to the crisis management toolkit available to central banks, with operational efficiency and speed of disbursement among the key advantages.
The Bank may also act as a trustee and collateral agent in connection with international financial operations. This includes providing ancillary reserve management services, such as supporting client central banks in reviewing and assessing their reserve management practices, and customised quantitative studies on asset allocation topics.
Every year the Banking Department organises knowledge-sharing events for reserve managers in order to promote the development of investment and risk management capabilities at central banks and international organisations.
- Training seminars and workshops
- Global and regional meetings
- Ad hoc topical conferences
