Banca Naţională a României

The Payment Incident Bureau is operating with the National Bank of Romania since 3 February 1997. Legal basis for its operation are Art. 2 para. (2), Art. 23, 25, 50 and 51 para. (3) of Law No. 101/1998 - The National Bank of Romania Act, pursuant to which the National Bank of Romania has issued the Regulation No. 1/2001 on organisation and operation of the Payment Incident Bureau with the National Bank of Romania, published in Monitorul Oficial al României No. 120/9 March 2001.

The Payment Incident Bureau (PIB) is an intermediation centre managing information specific to payment incidents resulting mainly from overdrafts or theft of payment instruments. Banks, as reporting entities, notify the PIB on any payment incident involving an accountholder of cheques, bills of exchange, promissory notes, in case of both inter- and intra-bank payments.

Information is forwarded to the PIB by computer system, using the Interbank Communication Network that links the National Bank of Romania head office to the head offices of all banks.

The PIB database is organised in two main files: the National File on Payment Incidents and the National Risky Persons File. All payment incidents, irrespective of the cause that generated them, are registered in the National File on Payment Incidents. The National File on Risky Persons contains all major payment incidents generated by causes such as:

• payment instruments drawn on overdraft;
• cheques issued without authorisation of the drawee;
• cheques issued with false date or missing a mandatory specification;
• traveller's cheques or circular cheque issued as bearer cheques;
• cheques issued by a drawer banned from performing banking operations;
• bills of exchange discounted without total/partial surrendered claim when transferred.

The natural or legal persons that produced major payment incidents involving cheques are recorded in the National File on Risky Persons and are placed under a ban on performing banking operations. A ban on performing banking operations is a ban enforced by a bank on an accountholder to issue cheques for one year.

The review of information recorded in PIB's database shows a significant increase each year in both value and number of payment incidents, as follows:

* until 30 November 2002

* until 30 November 2002

The main reasons, accounting for 70 percent of payment rejections that generated payment incidents reported to the PIB, were the total or partial lack of funds in the accounts of accountholders.

According to the provisions under Art. 47 of Regulation No. 1/2001 issued by the National Bank of Romania, natural or legal persons may have access to the PIB's database through commercial banks.

The National Bank of Romania considers that timely and accurate information may prevent infringement of the legislation on payments and may remove from the business environment the persons that elude the laws in force and cause business partners to incur losses, which are quite large at times.

Under these circumstances, the National Bank of Romania suggests to all natural or legal persons, especially companies, to access PIB's database via the commercial banks they have accounts opened with. The information thus obtained may be used in assessing payment risk, thus avoiding difficulties in collecting claims.

For example, any natural or legal person may inquire PIB's database before accepting a cheque from a client, and learn whether the respective cheque is part of a set of payment instruments endorsed by the National Bank of Romania, or whether it has already been recorded with the PIB as lost/stolen/damaged or withdrawn from circulation.