Regular information on margins, on other risk management practices and on the use of the various types of collateral, as well as on the maturity and liquidity profiles, is important for assessing the risks associated with securities lending activities from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. Surveys on credit terms in securities financing and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets, as have been launched by a number of central banks (around the world) and, soon, by the ECB, are a step in the right direction. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is also monitoring efforts to improve data on shadow banking and OTC transactions. Even in the case of the regulated sector, objectives have not yet been met. At present, most efforts relate to harmonising, increasing the frequency, achieving more granularity and extending the coverage of the data for financial sectors in the EU. Given the important role played by contagion in the recent crisis, data should enable analyses of the interlinkages – notably across financial institutions, and between them and the shadow banking system. Information on interlinkages between important players in the financial system, including counterparty credit exposures in different forms, funding exposures of individual financial firms, as well as detailed information on their maturity  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  mismatches and leverage, is necessary. This is because vulnerabilities can stem, for example, from common exposures in lending activities, from securities transactions, from positions in derivatives markets, from funding relationships, or from settlement and clearing functions.

These cover, in particular, monetary and financial statistics, namely MFI balance sheet data, MFI interest rate statistics, investment funds statistics and statistics on securitisation, as well as consolidated banking data. Information from market data providers, available via the ECB’s Market Database, as well as from international institutions such as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Eurostat or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is part of the datasets collected by the ECB, complements the set of information to support the ESRB’s analysis and deliberations. Cooperation is under way to ensure that the new legislative initiatives of the three ESAs incorporate ESRB requirements to the extent that they can be addressed by using supervisory data. Extensive work has already been carried out with the EBA and EIOPA on the new supervisory templates to be introduced in the next few years. Given the need for agility in responding to new data to cover ESRB requests for information, work on procedures to conduct ad hoc surveys has been carried out, ensuring that the confidentiality issues are duly resolved. All this work requires a very close and ongoing cooperation not only within the ESCB, but also with the ESAs and national supervisory authorities, within other collaboration fora and with many other stakeholders, in particular in the industries concerned, as well as with international organisations in the context of the G20 initiatives. This cooperation is ensured through a Contact Group recently appointed by the ESRB Steering Committee at my request, and it has already proved to be very useful.