Statistics on holdings of securities

KEY POINTS

The ECB collects securities holdings statistics (SHS) on a security-by-security basis. These data provide information on securities held by selected categories of euro area investors, broken down by instrument type, issuer country, investor country, currency of denomination and further classifications.

The regulation:

• defines the actual reporting population as consisting of sectoral data reporting agents¹ and group data reporting agents²;
• sets out the respective statistical reporting requirements for sectoral data reporting agents and group data reporting agents (further details are contained in the regulation’s Annex I), as well as more general statistical reporting requirements which are in line with Regulation (EU) No 1073/2013, Regulation (EU) No 1075/2013 and Regulation (EU) No 1374/2014;
• it lists the rules applicable to derogations and the instances in which NCBs may grant derogations for:
  • sectoral data reporting agents; and
  • group data reporting agents (updated by amending Regulation (EU) 2018/318);
• sets out accounting rules for the reporting of sectoral data and of group data, as well as general accounting rules;
• fixes the deadlines for the transmission by NCBs of the data to the ECB;
• sets out the rules regarding minimum standards for reporting (specified in Annex III);
• requires NCBs to define and implement the reporting arrangements to be followed by the actual reporting agents in accordance with national characteristics;
• lays down the procedures to be following in the event of a merger, division or reorganisation that might affect the fulfilment of statistical obligations;
• grants the NCBs the rights to verify or to compulsorily collect the information when reporting agents do not fulfil the minimum standards in Annex III.

The regulation has 3 annexes:

• I: Statistical reporting requirements;
• II: Definitions (of instrument categories, sectors, financial transactions, security-by-security attributes, holder attributes, issuer attributes, and accounting and risk-related attributes);
• III: Minimum standards to be applied by the actual reporting population.

Amendments to the regulation

The main changes introduced by amending Regulations (EU) 2016/1384 and (EU) 2018/318 extended the data collection in order to comprise more banking groups and more attributes starting with data relating to the reference period end-September 2018. The reporting population was also increased to cover all banking groups that are directly supervised by the ECB.

The guideline contains:

• further rules governing NCBs’ reporting obligations (depending on whether they have an International Securities Identification Number (ISIN)³ for sectoral data);
• reporting approaches for holdings of securities (depending on whether they have an ISIN, their issuer, etc.);
• approaches for compiling statistics on holdings of securities held in custody;
• a requirement for NCBs to inform the ECB, at least once a year, of the derogations granted to, renewed or withdrawn from reporting agents for the following calendar year, as well as any ad hoc reporting requirements imposed on actual reporting agents that have been granted a derogation;
• reference data on reporting groups’ consolidated balance sheet assets;
• notification procedure to group reporting agents;
• rules concerning:
  • a review procedure by the ECB General Council;
  • monitoring and verifying statistics; and
  • transmission standards.

Amendments to the guideline

• Guideline (EU) 2016/1386 introduced data quality management targets and revised the procedures to be followed by the NCBs when reporting to the ECB.
• Guideline (EU) 2018/323 clarified the scope of group data reporting agents and the letter of notification of classification as group data reporting agent.