REGULATION (EU) No 1374/2014 OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK of 28 November 2014 on statistical reporting requirements for insurance corporations (ECB/2014/50)

(1)

Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 provides in Article 2(1) that, for the fulfilment of its statistical reporting requirements, the European Central Bank (ECB), assisted by the national central banks (NCBs), has the right to collect statistical information within the limits of the reference reporting population and of what is necessary to carry out the tasks of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It follows from Article 2(2)(a) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 that insurance corporations form part of the reference reporting population for the purpose of fulfilling the ECB's statistical reporting requirements, inter alia, in the field of monetary and financial statistics. Furthermore, Article 2(4) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 states that, in duly justified cases, the ECB has the right to collect statistical information on a consolidated basis. Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 requires the ECB to specify the actual reporting population within the limits of the reference reporting population and provides it with the power to fully or partly exempt specific classes of reporting agents from its statistical reporting requirements.

(2)

The purpose of imposing statistical reporting requirements on insurance corporations is to provide the ECB with adequate statistics on the financial activities of the insurance corporation subsector in the Member States whose currency is the euro (hereinafter the ‘euro area Member States’), which are viewed as one economic territory. The collection of statistical information on insurance corporations is necessary to satisfy regular and ad hoc analytical needs, to support the ECB in carrying out monetary and financial analysis, and for the ESCB's contribution to the stability of the financial system.

(3)

NCBs should have the power to collect information on insurance corporations from the actual reporting population as part of a broader statistical reporting framework, provided that the fulfilment of the ECB's statistical requirements is not jeopardised. In such cases, it is appropriate to ensure transparency by informing the reporting agents of the various statistical purposes for which the data are collected.

(4)

In order to minimise the reporting burden on insurance corporations, NCBs should have the power to combine their reporting requirements under this Regulation with their reporting requirements under Regulation (EU) No 1011/2012 of the European Central Bank (ECB/2012/24) (3).

(5)

There is a close connection between the data collected by NCBs for statistical purposes under this Regulation and the data collected by national competent authorities (NCAs) for supervisory purposes under the framework established by Directive 2009/138/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (4). Given the ECB's general mandate under Article 5.1 of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (hereinafter the ‘Statute of the ESCB’) to engage in cooperation with other bodies in the field of statistics, and in order to limit the administrative burden and avoid the duplication of tasks, NCBs may derive the data required to be reported under this Regulation from data collected under Directive 2009/138/EC, including the national law implementing that Directive, having due regard to the terms of any cooperation arrangement between the relevant NCB and the relevant NCA. Article 70 of Directive 2009/138/EC provides that NCAs may transmit information intended for the performance of their tasks under that Directive to NCBs and other bodies with a similar function in their capacity as monetary authorities.

(6)

The European system of accounts set up by Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council (5) (hereinafter the ‘ESA 2010’) requires that the assets and liabilities of institutional units are reported in the country of residence. In order to minimise the reporting burden, if NCBs derive data required to be reported under this Regulation from data collected under Directive 2009/138/EC, the assets and liabilities of branches of insurance corporations whose head offices are resident in the European Economic Area (EEA) may be aggregated with those of the head offices. Limited information on branches of insurance corporations should be collected for the purposes of monitoring their size and any deviations from the ESA 2010.

(7)

The standards for the protection and use of confidential statistical information as laid down in Article 8 of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 should apply to the collection of statistical information under this Regulation.

(8)

While it is recognised that regulations adopted under Article 34.1 of the Statute of the ESCB do not confer any rights or impose any obligations on Member States whose currency is not the euro (hereinafter ‘non-euro area Member States’), Article 5 of the Statute of the ESCB applies to both euro and non-euro area Member States. Recital 17 of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 states that Article 5 of the Statute of the ESCB, together with Article 4(3) of the Treaty on European Union, implies an obligation to design and implement at national level all the measures that the non-euro area Member States consider appropriate to collect the statistical information needed to fulfil the ECB's statistical reporting requirements and to make timely preparations in the field of statistics in order to become euro area Member States.

(9)

Article 7(1) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 provides that the ECB has the power to impose sanctions on reporting agents that fail to comply with the statistical reporting requirements set out in ECB regulations or decisions.

(10)

By the year 2020, at the latest, the Governing Council should assess the merits and costs of: (a) an increase in the coverage of quarterly reporting from 80 % to 95 % of the total market share of insurance corporations in each euro area Member State; (b) the separate reporting of assets and liabilities of branches of insurance corporations where the branches are resident in euro area Member States and the parent entities of such branches are resident in the EEA; and (c) a further reduction in the time for the transmission of data by reporting agents to four weeks, following the end of the quarter to which the data relates,