Article 1 Definitions

‘reporting Member State’ means a Member State whose currency is the euro; Member States whose currency is not the euro may decide to become a reporting Member State by incorporating the provisions of this Regulation into their national law or otherwise imposing relevant reporting requirements in accordance with their national law; this may include, in particular, Member States that participate in the SSM via close cooperation in accordance with Article 7 of Council Regulation (EU) No 1024/2013 (6);

‘resident’ has the same meaning as defined in Article 1(4) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98;

‘institutional unit’ has the same meaning as defined in paragraphs 2.12 and 2.13 of Annex A to Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council (7);

‘foreign branch’ means an institutional unit which is a legally dependent part of a legal entity resident in a different country to that where the legal entity is incorporated in accordance with the concept of a ‘single branch’ referred to in Article 2(3) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98;

‘legal entity’ means any entity which, under the national law to which it is subject, can acquire legal rights and obligations;

‘legal entity identifier’ (LEI) means an alphanumeric reference code in line with the ISO 17442 standard (8) assigned to a legal entity;

‘national identifier’ means a commonly used identification code which enables the unambiguous identification of a counterparty within its country of residency;

‘reporting agent’ means either a legal entity or a foreign branch that is resident in a reporting Member State and that is subject to the ECB's reporting requirements pursuant to this Regulation;

‘observed agent’ means an institutional unit whose activity as creditor or servicer is reported by the reporting agent. The observed agent is either:

‘counterparty’ means an institutional unit that is a party to an instrument or has an affiliation with a party to an instrument;

‘creditor’ means the counterparty bearing the credit risk of an instrument, other than a protection provider;

‘debtor’ means the counterparty which has the unconditional obligation to make repayments arising under the instrument;

‘protection provider’ means the counterparty that grants protection against a contractually agreed negative credit event and that bears the credit risk of the negative credit event;

‘servicer’ means the counterparty responsible for the administrative and financial management of an instrument;

‘national central bank(s)’ or ‘NCB(s)’ means the national central bank(s) of Member States of the European Union;

‘relevant NCB’ means the NCB of the reporting Member State in which the reporting agent is resident;

‘central credit register’ (CCR) means a credit register operated by an NCB that receives reports from, and provides support to lenders in the financial sector, by providing them with credit and credit risk information;

‘credit institution’ has the same meaning as defined in Article 4(1)(1) of Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council (9);

‘institution’ has the same meaning as defined in Article 4(1)(3) of Regulation (EU) No 575/2013;

‘asset’ has the same meaning as defined in paragraph 7.15 of Annex A to Regulation (EU) No 549/2013;

‘credit risk’ means the risk that a counterparty fails to make any payments that it is contractually obliged to make;

‘contract’ means a legally binding agreement between two or more parties under which one or multiple instruments are created;

‘instrument’ means any item specified in the data attribute ‘type of instrument’, as defined in Annex IV.

‘protection’ means an assurance or coverage against a negative credit event, by means of any item listed in the data attribute ‘type of protection’ as defined in Annex IV;

‘commitment amount’ means the sum of the data attributes ‘outstanding nominal amount’ and ‘off-balance-sheet amount’ as defined in Annex IV;

‘on an individual basis’ means with reference to a single institutional unit, including institutional units that are part of a legal entity.