CORPORATE SERVICES

BACH Centre of Excellence

Today, businesses face unprecedented challenges that demand agility, adaptability, innovative solutions, and a laser focus on delivering long-term value to thrive. To this end, BACH is thrilled to announce the launch of its Centre of Excellence (COE).

So, what exactly is a COE? Gartner defines a COE as a physical or virtual center of knowledge concentrating existing expertise and resources in a discipline or capability to attain and sustain world-class performance and value.”

To start with, BACH has undertaken an organizational redesign, expanding its structure to include full-time functions in key disciplines aligned with its vision for Customer primacy, exponential growth, and focused Risk Management. Here, the COE will start ensuring that silos are disrupted with intentional collaboration across functions to deliver world-class performance and best practice solutions.

But it does not stop there; BACH will employ its COE to assemble experts in various disciplines throughout the Clearing and Settlement stakeholder field. Symposiums will focus on matters of mutual concern for thought leadership, innovative solutions, and world-class standards that drive organizations forward together.

Does this sound like something that would interest you? We hope so, because an invitation may be coming your way in the not-too-distant future.

As the sole national financial clearinghouse in The Bahamas, BACH is the only authorized agent that facilitates automated Clearing and Settlement of monetary transactions between the seven (7) major Retail Banks and The Central Bank of The Bahamas. Therefore, providing this exclusive service is pivotally essential to the efficient operation of The Bahamas’ financial eco-system.

Check Clearing & Settlement Service

Prior to the inauguration of BACH, local Banks manually exchanged physical checks to settle them. As a result, check instruments could require one week to clear for payment. With the implementation of BACH’s automated infrastructure, checks clear and settle by the next business day.

BACH employs the X9 cheque standard to validate all incoming cheque payments. “X9” is the file format used in electronic banking systems to represent checks as images in files. The following types of payments are accepted:

Cheque

Cheque Return

Electronic Credits and Debits Payments Service

BACH catapulted The Bahamas’ financial eco-system much closer to the desirable “speed of now” making it significantly easier to initiate payments between Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Customer (B2C), Customer-to-Customer (C2C) and Customer-to-Business (C2B), so long as the Originator and Receiver hold Bank accounts with any of the seven major Retail Banks. Employing the widely used NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association) standard, BACH provides the following NACHA payment products: –

Corporate Credit or Debit – (CCD)

A Corporate Credit or Debit entry facilitates B2B payments between two separate companies or a single company consolidating the cash it holds at various financial institutions.

Credit Initiated Entry – (CIE)

A single credit entry initiated by a consumer (originator) to a non-consumer account. CIE is a consumer-initiated credit entry, a credit push to a merchant, typically used by a financial institution’s or third-party’s bill pay service.

Prearranged Payment and Deposit – (PPD)

A Prearranged Payment and Deposit entry is a credit or debit to a consumer’s bank account.

  • Debit
A single or recurring debit transaction for collection of fixed or variable amounts for loan and mortgage payments, utilities, insurance, tuition, contributions, etc. In most B2C contexts, PPD is by far the most used SEC code.
  • Credit
A single or recurring credit transaction for payment of payroll, expense reimbursement, dividends, retirement, interest, etc.