Assets of Financial Institutions

    

This statistical table brings together aggregate data for banks, credit
unions, building societies, corporations covered by the Financial Sector
(Collection of Data) Act 2001 (known as Registered Financial Corporations
(RFCs)) and other significant parts of the financial sector for which
aggregate data are published by the RBA, the ABS and APRA.

Care should be exercised in drawing conclusions about relative sizes and rates
of growth of institutions because of the different nature of their activities
and different coverage of the various data collections. Coverage differences
include: timing (e.g. most bank data are monthly averages until June 2000 and
end-month thereafter); valuation; location (e.g. life office data before 1988
only covers assets in Australia, most other collections include overseas
assets); and netting out of transactions within some groups. Coverage of some
series changes over time: in recent years aggregates for individual groups
have been significantly affected by conversion of non-banks to banks,
reclassification between RFC categories and changes to reporting forms. Some
further details of coverage can be obtained from statistical files dealing
with the relevant institutions.

aReserve Bank (RBA)a data for June 1996 adjusted for change in accounting
policy.

aBanks (other than RBA)a: up to 1985 inclusive refers to A$ assets in
Australia only. From 1989 equals the totals shown in statistical table B2.

aOther authorised deposit-taking institutionsa excludes some ADIs, including
SCCIs. Data from December 1999 inclusive are drawn from APRAas quarterly
return. These data will differ from the total assets figures presented in
statistical tables B7 and B8 because they include assets of all building
societies and credit unions, whereas statistical tables B7 and B8 only include
data for building societies and credit unions with total assets greater than
or equal to $50 million.

From December 1999 data, aRFCsa cover registered corporations whose assets in
Australia (including related corporations) exceed $50 million. Prior to
December 1999, this threshold was set at $5 million. In April 2003,
responsibility for the collection of financial statistics from RFCs was
transferred from the RB to APRA. Prior to April 2003, these data were
collected by the RB under the now repealed Financial Corporations Act 1974.
These changes have resulted in breaks in all series covering RFCs at April
2003. aFinance companies and general financiersa includes corporations
formerly registered as Category E (Pastoral Finance Companies), F (Finance
Companies) and G (General Financiers) under the Financial Corporations Act
1974.

The assets of life offices and superannuation funds and other managed funds
have been consolidated by the ABS. As a result, these data should not be
compared to statistical tables B14aB18, which contain unconsolidated data.

aGeneral insurance officesa include both private and public sector offices.
Data are sourced from the ABS Financial Accounts and relate to financial
assets only.

aSecuritisation vehiclesa (commonly referred to as issuers of asset-backed
securities) are special purpose vehicles set up to securitise selected assets,
including residential mortgages. Many of the securities issued by these
vehicles are held by other institutions shown in the table. More detailed data
are shown in statistical table B19.



Tags: assets, finance, financialinstitutions, rba, statistics
Organization: Reserve Bank of Australia