Counterparty data reporting improvements are a priority

The Senior Financial Supervisors from 10 countries (the Senior Supervisors Group (SSG)) has issued a report to the Financial Stability Board (FSB) which assesses progress on measuring and reporting of counterparty risk by large, complex financial firms.

The report titled Progress Report on Counterparty Data concludes that while firms have made improvements in assessing counterparty risk, on the whole current practices fail to meet supervisory expectations or industry self-identified best practices.  Some firms have met expectations for timeiness and frequency, data aggregation capability and data quality; however, others failed to make as much progress as anticipated. 

One particular area of concern remains firms’ inability to produce and submit to supervisors high-quality data on a consistent basis.  The SSG notes that firms have made insufficient progress in improving data quality.  While they have improved their data capture systems, data accuracy is still noticeably deficient at many institutions.  The SSG caution that if firms cannot produce accurate data in relatively benign times, they would be unlikely to be able to do so during periods of market stress.  The SSG urges supervisors to make it a high priority for the firms they oversee to aggregate and report exposures in a timely and accurate fashion.

Related link:

http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/banking/2014/SSG_Progress_Report_on_Counterparty_January2014.pdf