All the State’s flows of funds (expenditure and revenue), along with the Treasury correspondents’ flows, are centralised in real time through a single account held with the Banque de France and managed by AFT. The single account records all financial transactions executed by more than 4,000 public accountants using nearly 3,000 transaction accounts.
This structure enables the Banque de France to provide AFT with a centralised, real-time view of the Treasury’s single account so that AFT can make medium- and long- term forecasts of expenditure and financing in order to optimise the State’s cash management.
AFT also relies on Banque de France staff for the practical organisation of Treasury security auctions and oversight of the settlement process for the securities sold.
Acting as an intermediary between AFT and the primary dealers, the Banque de France receives the primary dealers’ bids and then compiles an anonymous summary of the orders and presents it to AFT, which uses it to allocate each security.
To carry out this task, the Banque de France has developed a dedicated and highly secure system called MAITRE (Mécanisme d’Adjudications Informatisé du Trésor), which replaced the former TELSAT system (système de TELétransmission des Soumissions aux Adjudications du Trésor) in 2022. This new system is used by the primary dealers to submit their bids and by AFT to allocate Treasury securities.
The Banque de France provides this service under the terms of separate agreements with AFT and with each primary dealer.