central government, non-financial institutions, financial institutions, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), residential mortgages or commercial property) are reported to supervisory authorities, but these breakdowns are not part of regular harmonised public financial reporting. Hence, surveillance indicators and assessment exercises based on publicly available credit exposure data may by impaired by the high level of aggregation of the information disclosed. For example, if early warning signals were to point to risks emerging in commercial property or the SME sector, it would be important to assess the relevance of banks’ exposures to this particular asset class in a systematic way. This is not possible if all credit exposures are disclosed in aggregate. Furthermore, the breakdown of credit exposures can be rather important for monitoring banks’ risk profiles in the macroprudential context. In risk assessment work, the quality of top-down stress testing results may be compromised if the distribution of credit exposures by bank across the main exposure classes needs to be approximated. Likewise, information on credit risk parameters, notably on incurred losses by type of exposure, would need to be consistently disclosed by banks, or to be made available to macro-prudential authorities from supervisory sources. In turn, owing to the importance of such credit exposure data, I much welcome the efforts being undertaken to harmonise the datasets in existing credit registers, subject also to an improved coverage, even if this can only complement extensive supervisory reports.
In the wording of the Treaty, the ECB is requested to contribute to the smooth conduct of policies pursued by the competent authorities with respect to the prudential supervision of credit institutions and the stability of the financial system. Furthermore, the ECB’s financial stability function is also related to its responsibility for overseeing financial market infrastructures. The legal framework under which the ECB collects statistical data has in fact recently been extended to expressly recognise its powers to collect data for this purpose. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  In 2011 the EU institutional framework was revised to explicitly address both macro and micro-prudential supervision. This led to the establishment of the European System of Financial Supervision, the three new European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) and the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). The ECB is in charge of providing analytical and statistical support to the ESRB, notably by collecting and processing information that feeds into discussions within the ESRB. 1 3. What has been achieved so far? In recognition of an increasingly interconnected financial system, considerable progress is being made in the enhancement and development of new statistics at the euro area, EU and global level. At the euro area level, improvements in ECB statistics are notable with regard to, in particular, the development of enhanced statistics relating to monetary financial institutions (MFIs) and to shadow banking (e.g. securitisation vehicles).