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Finance

Supervisory data collection

High-quality data to ensure sound supervision of the EU financial system.

What the EU is doing and why

Supervision of the EU financial system relies on data that is timely, relevant and of high quality. The volume and complexity of the data required to oversee the financial system have grown substantially over the last decade. In parallel, there has been a rapid evolution of digital technologies to collect and analyse such data. EU supervisory reporting rules, and the way authorities collect and use data needs to keep pace with these developments.

In this context, the Commission carried out a comprehensive fitness check of supervisory reporting requirements in EU financial services legislation. The fitness check concluded that, overall, supervisory reporting in EU financial services is necessary and effective. However, it also showed that the current way of defining the reporting requirements and collecting data can be complex and lead to inefficiencies in the reporting process. There are some redundancies and inconsistencies in the requirements and cases where companies have to report very similar data to several authorities in parallel. Additional national reporting and ad hoc data requests by supervisors add to the complexities. Moreover, EU supervisory reporting requirements do not adequately reflect recent technological developments and are not well suited to the use of modern IT tools. All this can be costly and burdensome for companies and results in data that is of lower quality and therefore less useful to the supervisory authorities.

The fitness check identified five main areas for improvement: the legislative process and instruments, governance, data needs and uses, data consistency and harmonisation, and technology. In order to address the shortcomings identified in the fitness check and to enable supervisory authorities to seize the opportunities of data-driven supervision, the Commission adopted the strategy on supervisory data in EU financial services on 15 December 2021.

The Commission’s long-term vision on supervisory data in EU financial services focuses on four building blocks

  1. increased consistency and standardisation of data
  2. better data sharing among authorities
  3. an improved process for developing and adopting reporting requirements
  4. joint governance

Delivering these essential building blocks will enable a more effective and efficient use of modern technologies.

Policy making timeline

The development of a modern and more integrated supervisory reporting system is an ambitious, complex, and long-term undertaking. For this reason, work on modernising supervisory reporting in the EU is taking a gradual approach and builds on existing tools. The Commission continues to work with all relevant stakeholders, including EU and national authorities and industry, to make progress in the implementation of the supervisory data strategy.

This regularly updated section records relevant milestones and progress in the implementation of the supervisory data strategy.

  1. 21 March 2024
    Workshop

    The Commission Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) held a workshop on strategy on supervisory data in financial services - progress achieved and next steps.

  2. 29 February 2024
    Report
  3. 20 October 2023
    Workshop

    The Commission Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) held a workshop on building a common data dictionary in EU financial services.

  4. 16 February 2023
    Workshop

    The Commission Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) held a workshop in data sharing between authorities in EU financial services.

  5. 18 October 2022
    Workshop

    The Commission Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) held a workshop on unlocking the potential of machine readable and executable reporting.

  6. 13 June 2022
    Call for feedback

    The Commission launched a call for feedback to identify legal and technical obstacles to sharing supervisory, statistical and resolution data amongst EU and national authorities.

    End date: 23 September  2022

  7. 15 December 2021
    Strategy
  8. 19 February 2020
    Strategy

    The Commission adopted the European data strategy.

  9. 1 December 2017
    Consultation