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A SET OF KEY FINANCIAL INDICATORS

Working Party on Financial Statistics meeting

Paris, 29 November - 1 December 2010

Isabelle YNESTANational Accounts and Financial Statistics

OECD Statistics Directorate

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INTRODUCTION

Importance of timely, frequent and comparable statistics.

Transformation of basic data into meaningful indicators: To analyse the behaviour and performance of the various institutional

sectors of the economy; To carry out cross-country comparisons.

The OECD Secretariat will construct these indicators from financial accounts and financial balance sheets for all OECD countries.

The choice of such indicators will be guided by comments received from WPFS delegates.

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BACKGROUND The need for timely, frequent and comparable indicators was

confirmed by the results of two OECD surveys: 2008: user survey on financial accounts in the framework of a quality

review of OECD databases; 2009: survey entitled “Proposal for financial indicators”.

June 2010: CSTAT’s draft 2011-12 Programme of Work and Budget includes a number of activities to increase the timeliness and frequency of key financial statistics.

October 2010: CMF Delegates confirmed the usefulness of more frequent data.

2010 WPFS meeting: the Secretariat proposes a set of macro-financial indicators for a random selection of OECD countries.

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Financial indicators derived from financial accounts (transactions)

Financial accounts enable to draw useful indicators which Give a picture of the short-term behaviour of institutional sectors Show reactions to market events

Examples of indicators:

G7 – Net financial transactions of total economy, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).

General government deficit, as a percentage of GDP.

Households net financial transactions, as a percentage of gross disposable income (GDI).

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Financial indicators derived from financial balance sheets

Financial balance sheets offer a number of meaningful indicators which Measure the wealth of each institutional sectors Provide information on the sectoral or economy-wide position and

performance.

Examples of indicators:

Contribution of each institutional sector to debt of the economy in 2009, as a percentage of GDP.

Non-financial corporations debt-to-equity ratio.

Leverage of the banking sector, as a percentage of total equity.

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Financial indicators derived from financial balance sheets (Cont.)

General government debt, as a percentage of GDP.

Financial net worth of general government, as a percentage of GDP.

Households financial net worth, as a percentage of GDI.

Households total debt, as a percentage of GDI.

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Conclusions

OECD financial indicators

Calculated by the Secretariat for all OECD countries.

Based on OECD financial accounts and financial balance sheets databases.

Disseminated first on an annual basis, then on a quarterly basis.

With the aim of delivering useful, comparable and relevant information to users and analysts.

A first selection that can progressively be improved and expanded.

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Conclusions (Cont.)

The dissemination of these OECD financial indicators is under discussion:

Either a separate publication.

Or an expanded and renamed version of “National Accounts at a Glance”.

Once quarterly data is available, a quarterly press release is also envisaged, depending on countries’ coverage.

All indicators along with the underlying data will be on the OECD statistical website.

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Conclusions (Cont.)

Delegates are invited to

Discuss the relevance and the presentation of the indicators shown in the document COM/STD/DAF(2010)12.

Agree on their dissemination.

The OECD Secretariat thanks the delegates and all financial experts for their co-operation and contributions to this project during the past year.

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION