jens weidmann : welcome remarks at the 3rd imf statistical forum welcome remarks by dr jens weidmann, president of the deutsche bundesbank and chairman of the board of directors of the bank for international settlements, at the 3rd imf statistical forum, frankfurt am main, 19 november 2015. * 1. * * introduction dear mr. zhu, dear otmar issing, ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the 3rd imf statistical forum. it is probably safe to say that the bundesbank has seldom had the opportunity to welcome such a large body of international statistics experts. the objective over these two days is to bring together data producers, policy makers, academics and other users to discuss how to further improve the provision of statistics for micro and macroeconomic analyses. for central banks this is of vital importance. monetary policy ultimately depends on the availability of good statistics. the monetary and economic analyses that precede any deliberation on the appropriate monetary policy stance are built on a large amount of data on monetary aggregates, financial market data, inflation expectations or labour market indicators. i am therefore particularly glad that the bundesbank is hosting the first imf statistical forum to be held outside washington. and, when i tell you that the bundesbank is attaching great importance to statistics, i am not merely paying lip service to you. the importance the bundesbank attaches to statistics and statistical methods is shown, for instance, by the fact that carl friedrich gauss, one of the most influential statisticians of all time, was portrayed on the 10 deutsche mark banknote for a long time. building on the work of carl friedrich gauss, statistical methods have been perfected and the process of data collection has been refined again and again. often, the great progress made in the field of statistics has been driven by new demands. if you will, the supply of data and new methods has always responded to changes in demand. governments, for example, have always had a demand for statistics on the wealth of their citizens, as this helped them to collect taxes. in the 17th century, this led sir william petty, an englishman, to count chimneys in order to draw inferences about the wealth of an economy. his works can be seen as the foundation of modern social and economic statistics. but to find examples of how the supply of statistics has responded to demand one does not have to go back as far as the 17th century. in the 1930s, the great depression provided

cooperation exemplifies what will be important in the ssm. like us supervisors, ese, too, has recently seen eventful times. last year, we saw a considerable increase in the number of seminar participants – a noteworthy success and confirmation of the excellent work by those responsible for ese. these parties include the programme council, composed of proven supervisory experts and responsible for keeping the content of the training measures up to date at all times. the steering committee and the ese secretariat naturally also play a pivotal role. at this juncture, i would like to express my sincere thanks to the representatives of ese for all that you have done to make ese one of the leading training initiatives for supervisors in europe. 4. the future let us now take a further step – forward – and venture a look into the future. now that the european parliament has approved the draft legislation, the ssm can soon be officially launched. we have a year full of hard work ahead of us. thankfully, the preparations are in progress – through the high level group of ecb and national authorities ’ representatives and the many affiliated working groups, the basic framework of the ssm has already been laid out. over the coming months, we will define the further details of the cooperation between the ecb and national supervisors and codify them in a framework regulation. we will continue our work on the organisational and operational structure of the new supervisory regime and institute an efficient reporting process. however, in my opinion, it is the balancesheet assessment which represents the greatest challenge in the months ahead of us. the ecb needs a clear picture of the actual risk faced by the banks it will be supervising. moreover, light needs to be shed on which balance - sheet burdens arose under the watch of national supervisors. we therefore need a thorough and rigorous review of balance - sheets. this will be the first test of the ssm and of cooperation between the authorities involved. though we don ’ t have much time at all to accomplish this extremely complex task, i believe that, if we act in unison, we will succeed. one year from now, the preparations will be completed and the ssm will take the helm. in order for the ssm to exploit its advantages, one thing will be paramount : a consistent supervisory approach incorporating the strengths of individual national approaches and experiences. this common supervisory approach must build on established principles such as risk - orientation, proportionality as well as an integrated micro and macroprude