Registries

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1. Central Registry of Credits of Business Entities and Natural Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina contains the data on credits and other debts of business entities and natural persons with participants in the Registry Business entity is any entity being assigned Unique Identification Number (UIB). Natural person is any person having Unique Citizen Identity Number and natural person, non-resident / foreigner having Identification Number assigned by competent tax authority. Participant in Registry is any bank, microcredit organization, saving-credit organization, leasing company, factoring company, any company under the supervision of competent Entity Banking Agency, entity registered for placement of financial funds, included in the Registry at own request, and any other entity dealing with the repurchase of liabilities recorded in the Registry.   The Registry as the unique data base on credits and other loans of business entities and natural persons serves to assist stability of the banking sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, the data in Registry are useful to   participants, during their analyses of creditworthiness and monitoring, the Entity Banking Agencies and the Central Bank, for analyses, and also to courts, prosecution authorities, public attorney’s offices, authorities in charge of internal affairs and police agencies for performing tasks from their competences as defined by law. The Registry is established and run by the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the electronic data collection on credit and other debts of the business entities and natural persons. More at: https://cbbh.ba/Content/Read/27

2. The data from the Registry can be accessed by direct insight via Internet and in the form of individual reports. By direct insight via Internet, data in the Registry can be accessed by the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (free of charge), participants in the Registry (with charge), Entities' Banking Agencies, courts, prosecutors' offices, public attorneys' offices, authorities in charge of internal affairs and police agencies (free of charge). The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina issues individual reports from the Registry based on the written request of legally authorised authorities for performance of the tasks within their legally defined competences. Banks, microcredit organizations, saving-credit organizations, leasing companies and factoring companies and any other company under the supervision of competent Entity Banking Agency, issue individual reports based on the submitted written request of business entity or natural person solely related to the debts of the applicant. The submitted written request of a business entity should be signed by an authorised person and verified by the seal of such business entity. The submitted written request of a natural person should be signed by the natural person and include the number of the identification document and the name of the issuing institution. The Central Bank of BH publishes the list of institutions, issuing the reports, on its web site.  More at: https://cbbh.ba/Content/Read/27

3. Financial institutions, providing the data in the Registry, are responsible for updating the data in the Central Registry of Credits. In addition, financial institutions categorise their clients, in line with the legislation passed by the competent authorities. The Decision on Central Registry of Credits of Business Entities and Natural Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina stipulates that " All participants in the Registry are obliged to submit the data into Central Registry of Credits in electronic form, no later than the next day upon the day of change in data, in the period from 8h00 to 16h00. More at: https://cbbh.ba/Content/Read/27

4. Single Registry of Accounts of Business Entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina contains accounts of business entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which perform payment operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina via accounts open in commercial bank and account in the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Registry assists mostly commercial banks, tax authorities and police and other level of authority when discovering financial structures and transactions, which companies and individuals can use in unlawful way, such as tax evasion and money laundry. One of the purposes of the Registry is to assist the payment systems' operations.

In addition, the Registry provides the information to all legal entities and natural persons which need to collect their claims by enforcement via competent institutions. The Registry is established and run by the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the electronic data collection on accounts of the business entities. Commercial banks and the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina deliver data immediately upon the change on the account, and particularly the data on opening and closing an account, blocking and unblocking of the account and change of the main account. Banks are accountable for accuracy and timeliness of the delivered data, and Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina is responsible for concordance of those data. The data from the Registry can be accessed by direct insight via Internet and in the form of individual reports. All users, except for the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina and commercial banks, can use the reports from the Registry only for own use, and cannot use them further for other purposes, nor distribute them.

Report on the account of business entity contains:

1. Report on the status history of the business entity account
2. Report on the accounts of business entity ,
3. Report that the business entity has no recorded account in the Single Registry of Accounts in BH,
4. Report on the account of business entity - Main account, and
5. Report on the change of the business entity Main account of

With the aim to develop the payments systems, the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina has upgraded the Single Registry of Accounts of Business Entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to new platform and with new functionalities, staring on 1 October 2018. Instead of the prior Registry with transactions data, the upgraded Registry contains the data of all account of business entities, which perform the payment operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina via accounts open in banks and Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

The Decision on Single Registry of Accounts of Business Entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina stipulates the way of the data delivery, banks accountability, and the way of reporting on the data from Registry. Banks notice everyday about the changes of the accounts' data, and one of the information is the change of the account status. Given the status of account, an account in the Registry can be recorded as closed, blocked, active and as error. The Registry also provides the information on the date and time of the last change in an account status. The Report on the number of blocked accounts is prepared on the first working day in month from the Single Registry of Accounts including the situation on that very day.

There is no information on the reason of an account blocking, nor on the institution blocking the most of accounts in the Single Registry of Accounts.

More at: https://cbbh.ba/Content/Read/28

5. The Single Registry of Accounts, currently including accounts of business entities, has been established and run by the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, since 2004, and the Central Registry of Credits of Business Entities and Natural Persons has been run from 2006. With the upgrading of already existing Registry, along with accounts of the business entities, it would be covered and recorded the accounts of natural persons. These records would include the data on natural persons and banks in which they already have open accounts. In this way, it would be completed long time ago started upgrading process of the Single Registry of Business Entities and Natural Persons, thus facilitating the operations of all participants in the financial sector.  The chances for misuse and violations in financial sector would be less, the procedures would be accelerated and resources would be saved.

The significance of the Registry of Accounts of Natural Persons is also evident in the fact that the work of security agencies, juridical and tax authorities would be facilitated and supported. The Registry of Accounts of Natural Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina territory is extremely important for efficient functioning of the complete banking sector. In addition of being particularly important in fighting illegal activities, the Single Registry is also irreplaceable mechanism in combat against terrorism financing and money laundry, it facilitates the identification of the accounts of debtors in tax and enforcement proceedings, and other juridical proceedings. For citizens it means the shorter path to implement their rights in juridical proceedings, such as divorce proceedings, alimony collection, enforcement and heritage proceedings and similar.

For banking sector, the Registry of Accounts of Natural Persons would ensure more efficient process of claims collection.

The setting of the Registry would provide conditions for the legally authorised bodies to have free access to the integral information on accounts of natural persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina for overall economic area, for carrying out the tasks within their legal competences (courts, prosecutor offices, tax authorities, State Investigation and Protection Agency and other bodies authorised by the law).

6. The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina has the lawful and legal ground, as well as, all technical preconditions to establish this Registry. From 2004 until today, the legal powers of the Central Bank have not changed or narrowed, and the Central Bank may ground the Decision on the Single Registry of Accounts of Natural Persons on the same legal basis on which all other valid decisions related to the Registries are grounded, which have been successfully run for many years at the Central Bank. Setting up of all Registries, and the Registry of Accounts of Natural Persons, as well, has its ground in the Law on the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose one of the basic tasks is to support or to set and maintain adequate payment and accounting systems and to implement the actions in helping to combat money laundering, anti-terrorist measures and measures against obstruction of the implementation of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which apply to banks."

Given the current situation in BH, the Registry of Accounts of Natural persons, for area of Republika Srpska, has been established by the las t amendment of the Law on Internal Payment Transactions from 2019, and this Registry for the area of that Entity is under jurisdiction of the Agency for Representing, IT and Financial Services. The similar solution is stipulated by the legal framework in Federation of BH. However, there is no question about the need, justification and significance of running the Single Registry for the area of whole BH, for which operations the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina already has technical preconditions.

The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not dispute the existing of such Registries at the Entity level, such is the case with the Registries of the Accounts of Business Entities. However, it is clear that one Entity Law cannot limit or diminish the powers, which the Central Bank has by the Law on Central Bank of BH, i.e. the Entity Laws cannot limit and prevent state and other bodies to carry out their stipulated competences, particularly when are the issues, being especially important for all participants in the financial system and users of these data. In the same time, this, in no way, represents the transfer of authorities from Entity to the state level.