Content
About the statistics
Definitions
-
Name and topic
-
Name: Financial institutions (discontinued)
Topic: Banking and financial markets
-
Responsible division
-
Division for Financial Markets Statistics
-
Definitions of the main concepts and variables
-
Definition of the main terms
Financial institution: Company, enterprise or other institution engaged in financial intermediation. Includes under current legislation: commercial banks, savings banks, insurance companies, mortgage and finance companies. Under this definition, Statistics Norway also includes state lending institutions and Norges Bank in published statistics.
Brief description of the various financial institutions:
Norges Bank: Norway's central bank with advisory, executive and controlling functions associated with foreign exchange, monetary and credit policy.
Commercial banks incl. the Postal Bank and savings banks: The banks are primarily involved in lending money, but also have operations covering credit procurement, payments transfers, foreign exchange transactions and management of funds.
Finance corporations: A group term for financial institutions outside banks, insurance companies and state lending institutions that are permitted to conduct financial activities pursuant to the Financial Institutions Act. The main division runs between the bond-issuing mortgage companies and other companies called finance companies.
State lending institutions: State lending institutions issue loans, subsidies and guarantees to various prioritized purposes and groups based on political criteria and goals. The loans are often offered at borrower-friendly terms with respect to interest rates, payments and collateral.
Insurance companies: The primary job of insurance companies is to distribute risk among policyholders and to a certain extent transfer risk from the customers to themselves.
Definitions of the main variables
Balance sheet: The balance sheet shows assets, liabilities and equity at the end of the financial year.
Profit and loss account: Shows income, costs and expenses over the course of the calendar year.
Total assets: This is the same as a bank's balance sheet, i.e., the sum of liabilities and equity.
Loan market: The loan market means the market for loans from financial institutions to the public, defined as households, non-financial corporations and local government and lending between the financial institutions.
Funding: Describes in general the placement of money in a credit institution that is obligated to repay the money on request or after a certain period of notice. Is also frequently used to describe the institution's financing in the form of issues of certificates and bonds.
Deposit: Is used to describe both the individual amount that is deposited and the overall amount credited to one person in a specific account in a bank. There are two types of deposits, those withdrawn without notice (sight deposits) and those where a certain period of notice is in effect (time deposits).
Interest: Interest is the cost of using another's capital. It is calculated for a certain period of time, usually one year and is expressed as a percentage. Lending rate is the interest rate banks and other lending institutions take for loans. Deposit rate is the interest rate banks pay for deposits from the public. The interest margin is the difference between lending and deposit rate.
Net interest income: Total interest income less total interest costs.
Money market rate: Interest on loans and placement in the money market. In the money market, interest rates on loans/placements are noted with a term from one day to 12 months.
Money supply: A measure of the public's (local government, business and households and financial institutions outside banks) stocks of funds which without significant cost may be used at short notice.
-
Standard classifications
-
We have four types of classifications: instrument, sector, industry and type:
Financial instruments and physical capital: Liabilities, claims and other assets in the balance sheet of the financial institutions are divided into two main groups with a view to providing major uniform groups such as bank lending, funding and deposits.
Debtor and creditor sector: Borrowers and lenders are classified according to institutional sector classification, based on national accounts rules.
Debtor and creditor industry: Based on the rules in the industry standard, the individual financial instruments are grouped according to the debtor's or creditor's industry affiliation.
Types of income and expenses, including interest income and expenses, are based on national accounts rules.
Administrative information
-
Regional level
-
Only at the national level.
-
Frequency and timeliness
-
Quarterly and annual.
-
International reporting
-
Not relevant
-
Microdata
-
Publication-ready data are stored in a FAME and SAS- database.
Background
-
Background and purpose
-
The purpose is to provide statistics for the national accounts, financial sector balances and census of foreign assets and liabilities, and publish current credit market statistics. While statistics for public and private banks and mortgage companies have been published in NOS Credit Market Statistics since 1953, accounts statistics for savings banks date back to 1870. The statistics have been published in the series Banking and Credit Statistics, Current Figures, since 1981. In first quarter 1996, Statistics Norway switched from publishing monthly figures to quarterly figures for financial institutions. Because of changes in the publishing form and frequency, Norges Bank took over the work of collecting and publishing detailed accounts figures for banks, state lending institutions, mortgage and finance companies on 1 January 1996.
-
Users and applications
-
The statistics are included in national accounts, financial sector balances, balance of payments and statistics on Norway's foreign assets and liabilities. Other major users are Norges Bank, the Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission, Ministry of Finance and the media.
-
Coherence with other statistics
-
The statistics are based on the guidelines in the national accounts standards "System of National Accounts" from 1993 (SNA 1993), "European System of Accounts" from 1995 (ESA 1995) and the IMF's "Manual on Monetary and Financial Statistics".
Statistics from the financial institutions are used in the national accounts, financial sector balances, balance of payments and in the statistics on Norway's foreign assets and liabilities.
-
Legal authority
-
Statistics Act Section 2-2 (state lending institutions), Section 3-2 (banks and finance corporations), Act on the Supervision of Credit Institutions, Insurance Companies and Securities Trading, etc., Sections 1 and 4 (insurance companies).
-
EEA reference
-
Council Directive 635/86. This is a supervisory and accounting directive for banks and other credit institutions.
Council Regulation 58/97. The regulation specifies special appendices for insurance, banks and other credit institutions, and pension funds as part of the regulation on structural statistics for business enterprises. The objective is to establish a common framework for collecting, processing and communicating statistics with respect to structure, competitive situation and efficiency.
Council Regulation 2223/96. The regulation covers the European system for national and regional accounts.
Production
-
Population
-
The population is all public and private banks, mortgage and finance companies under the supervision of the Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission, state lending institutions and the central bank limited according to national accounts rules, and insurance companies and pension funds. According to the Standard Industrial Classification this covers industries 65.11, 65.12, 65.22 and 66.
The statistical unit forming the basis for the accounting reports is the enterprise.
-
Data sources and sampling
-
Information is based on administrative registers in Norges Bank that collect balance sheets and profit and loss accounts with specifications on a machine-readable medium or paper forms.
The sample is defined on the basis of a number of financial corporations licensed by the Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission. (The statistics are in principle based on total censuses.)
-
Collection of data, editing and estimations
-
Starting 1.1.1996, Norges Bank took over the work of obtaining accounting data for division 65 industries. The Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission and Statistics Norway work together to obtain accounting data from insurance companies and pension funds.
With the exception of insurance companies, revisions of the financial institutions' accounting statements are undertaken by Norges Bank. The former are revised by Statistics Norway and the Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission.
-
Confidentiality
-
Not relevant
-
Comparability over time and space
-
The accounts statistics for the financial institutions are based on current accounting regulations for financial institutions. Violations can therefore occur in connection with changes in the Accounting Act and in the special regulations that apply to financial institutions.
Accuracy and reliability
-
Sources of error and uncertainty
-
Errors and discrepancies can occur in the accounting data. These discrepancies can have several sources:
* Errors in transferring the data from the institutions' primary accounts to receiving media
* Different accounting and estimation principles
* Different entry times
* Incompletely filled out reports from respondents
The response rate is nearly 100 per cent.