From my previous experiences, especially as head of the Directorate General Operations, and presently also, as President of the French Banking and Insurance Supervisory Authority, I measure what your contributions can provide in operational terms (risk assessment) and also in terms of analysis (research, advice, BACH data base). The works of your Committee, and so to say its affiliates, is useful and I would like to take the opportunity of this plenary meeting to encourage you to keep the same stance. From the perspective of a NCB, your contributions are important in so far they provide platforms for exchanging our thoughts, our know-how and, last but not least, for exchanging data within the Eurosystem but also with statistical institutions, witness in that regard is all what is being done with the European Group Register managed by EUROSTAT and now with the Committee for Monetary Financial and Balance of payment statistics. Obviously, Balance sheet and Profit & Loss information, or more generally information on non-financial companies, have a real bearing on our institutions in line with a twofold objective: assessing individual companies and using aggregated company data to perform macro economic analyses or researches. First, it is important for micro-analyses in the assessment of individual companies using classic ratio-based firm analysis methods. This can help us to evaluate our collateral, or portfolios of banks if we are involved in banking supervision.
But for an NCB member of the Eurosystem, the micro analyses have a particular importance within the European Credit Assessment Framework if it is recognised as an In-house Credit Assessment System. Those NCBs which run an ICAS (currently Austria, France, Germany and Spain) use balance sheet data for the assessment and prediction of default risk under a set of precisely defined conditions. The ICAS statute is demanding but it is worthwhile because it can play an important role for monetary policy operations. For this purpose, we need to rely on a good methodology, commonly agreed and depending to a large extent on an ability to deliver a sound and solid assessment of non-financial companies. This helps NCBs to fulfil one of their core functions, which is the refinancing of commercial banks and we experience that daily. On this very important subject – the ability to assess credit risk of non financial companies as offering a possibility to expand the amount of eligible collaterals – I took note that several NCBs are about to join the four present ICAS: this is a signal of the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  relevance of this mechanism to help the commercial banks to develop their loans and, hence, support economic growth.