in - house, drawing on the powers under the reserve bank act ( 1989 ) to collect data from financial institutions. these data account for most of the other 16, 000 time series in our fsis database and include institutional data collected for prudential purposes, data on the financial markets, data on notes and coins, and published financial system statistics. our survey respondents include banks and other financial institutions and this “ micro - data ” is used in our role as a prudential regulator and supervisor. commercial confidentiality means that this data isn ’ t generally published, but we use it to compile broader financial system statistics. we ’ ve a well - established practice of constructing and publishing these statistics. an example would be the standard statistical return for the banking system, which provides comprehensive information on the banking system ’ s balance sheet. some of our statistics act as inputs in the production of statistics new zealand ’ s own statistics, including the national accounts. table 1 some key reserve bank financial sector statistics collection coverage standard statistical return ( ssr ) banks and non - bank lending institutions credit card survey credit card issuers liquidity survey banks lvr new commitments banks with residential mortgage lending trade weighted indexes major trading partner currencies planned / under development insurance data collection licensed insurers managed funds survey investment and superannuation funds managed by nz fund managers income statement survey banks bank balance sheet survey banks nz securities database securities issued in the new zealand market bis central bankers ’ speeches financial statistics since the global financial crisis our financial data collections have grown substantially in recent years for three reasons. first, the intensity of our prudential oversight has increased since the global financial crisis of 2008 / 09. we ’ ve sought to strengthen our prudential regime for banks for example. as elsewhere, the gfc showed that risks around bank liquidity and funding in a period of financial turmoil were potentially much greater than anyone had expected. in 2010, we introduced new standards for banks requiring new minimum liquid asset requirements and a minimum core funding ratio. introducing these new standards meant that we needed new liquidity and funding data to monitor compliance with the new standards at both an individual bank and financial system level. another example of stronger prudential standards has been the introduction of temporary speed limits on the banks ’ high - loan - to - value ( lvr ) lending reflecting our concern at the growing risks in the housing sector. this, in turn, required us to collect additional data on banks ’ housing lending broken down by lvr

collect it can have implications for the quality of financial analysis ( or policymaking ) for years into the future. bis central bankers ’ speeches in assessing the costs of the new collection we also focus on the costs that our respondents might incur in undertaking significant internal system changes and enhancements in order to provide the information. we have an obligation to ensure that the costs that they incur are “ worth it ”. keeping up with structural change is always a challenge. the absence of financial statistics on a particular part of the financial sector can sometimes mask structural changes completely, because financial analysts have no way of seeing them. more often, we may be aware of shifting patterns but lack the statistics that can properly capture them. this can occur when new types of financial institution develop or when existing financial activities migrate from one type of institution to another that isn ’ t well represented by our statistics. structural changes can be very difficult to detect when they involve new financial products, unregulated institutions or the provision of financial services from offshore. structural change can also arise due to shifts in trading patterns between new zealand and the rest of the world. since the 1970s, the bank has published weighted average measures of the new zealand dollar relative to the currencies of our major trading partners. we report a variety of real and nominal measures of these trade weighted exchange rates ( twis ) on our website. our flagship twi was developed 15 years ago following the introduction of the euro and is based on five currencies ( the us dollar, australian dollar, yen, euro and british pound ). since then, trading patterns have changed dramatically. in particular, china is now the largest single destination for new zealand ’ s merchandise exports and its exchange rate has become more flexible. some years ago we developed a broader 14 currency trade weighted index, which included the chinese currency and this is published daily on our website alongside the five currency index. however, we are currently undertaking a full review of all the exchange rate measures that we publish, which we hope to complete before the end of the year. even with good statistical practices, and extensive liaison with users, many statistical collections ultimately become obsolete and need overhauling. our standard statistical return for the banking system has served us well over the past 15 years but we ’ re now redeveloping it. that reflects changes in the banking sector over the period and a better understanding of what to monitor in the sector. for example, the existing return provides little if any data on the