While the overall share of OFIs’ money holdings in M3 is only about 10% in the euro area so far – households account for about 50% – OFIs have contributed significantly to the annual growth of euro area M3 since 2005, adding up to 2 percentage points in some months, mainly due to the emergence and expansion of loan securitisation.
The motives of OFIs for holding money balances are likely to be of a fundamentally different nature than those of  17  International Monetary Fund, 2007. 18  See ECB Financial Stability Review, June 2007; ECB Monthly Bulletin, July 2007, forthcoming; Ferrero et al., 2007; von Landesberger, 2007. 19  Ferguson et al.