Nostro account
In banking, a nostro account ( Italian nostro , "our account") is a bank account that is managed by a domestic or foreign correspondent bank as the account holder for another credit institution . From the point of view of the correspondent bank managing the account, it is a loro account ( Italian loro , "your account").
General
One of the basic accounting concepts is the legal differentiation between current accounts and so-called loro and nostro accounts. The terms loro and nostro account appeared in an accounting lexicon that appeared in 1904. The distinguishing feature here is who is the account manager, i.e. who creates the account statement and who issues the balance confirmation. Credit institutions also maintain bilateral bank connections with one another (e.g. in interbank trading or international payment transactions ), which are based on a giro contract . The account-holding institute manages the bank account as a loro account , which from the perspective of the account holder represents a nostro account . A typical case are clearing houses that act as account administrators and maintain loro accounts for their clearing members.
account management
To distinguish between nostro and loro accounts, it depends on the account management. The bank maintains an account, which opens it in its own books, through which it books credits and direct debits and sends out account statements. From their point of view, it is a loro account. The other bank, which has this account for itself, posts mirror-image synchronously as part of the so-called nostro control via a nostro account, which, as a "shadow account" ( skontro ), is supposed to check whether the postings and balances on the loro account are understandable from their own perspective. Often, foreign currency accounts are managed as a Loro account in foreign payment transactions .
The postings and balances are opposite on the Loro and Nostro accounts. If the loro account shows a debit balance, the nostro account has a credit balance and vice versa. A debit nostro account means that the corresponding loro account shows a credit balance . Accordingly, there is a debit balance on the loro account for the vendor nostro account.
meaning
Nostro and loro accounts are usually used to process clearing bookings in payment transactions or for short-term investments in interbank business . They come only in the bilateral interbank trading and bilateral foreign payment transactions of banks before one another and are increasingly multilateral centralized transfer systems such as TARGET2 , EBA CLEARING , Continuous Linked Settlement or Central Counterparty replaced.
International
In Switzerland and Luxembourg , loro accounts are also called vostro accounts (from Italian vostro : "your, your").
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert Stern, Buchhaltung-Lexikon , 1904, p. 333
- ↑ Hans Theodor Pfälzer, Bank and Savings Bank Accounting in Practice , 1959, p. 32
- ^ Walther Hadding / Franz Häuser, in: Herbert Schimansky / Hermann-Josef Bunte / Hans Jürgen Lwowski (eds.), Bankrechts-Handbuch , 2011, § 51a Rn. 4th