ECB and EIOPA Publish Common Minimum Standards for Data Revision in EU

Given the integrated reporting approach followed for supervisory and statistical reporting to ECB and EIOPA, a common understanding is required about the minimum level of data quality and about when a revision of data is considered necessary. While information reported should be of good quality at the time of its first submission, at a later stage, revisions may be needed on request by the European or national authorities or on financial institutions' own initiative. The common minimum standards specify:

• Request for revisions—When national competent authorities or national central banks should request financial institutions to revise the data previously submitted
• Synchronization—The same data has to be available at all levels (that is, financial institutions, ECB, EIOPA) at all times. This means that any revision of data should take place at all levels of the transmission chain to ensure that all parties involved have the same data. Exceptions are possible only where purely operational challenges occur
• Timeliness—The time when the revisions should be sent by national competent authorities and national central banks to EIOPA and the ECB, respectively
• Explanatory notes—All non-routine revisions of aggregated data and significant routine revisions of aggregated data should be accompanied by notes from the national competent authority/national central bank explaining what triggered the revision.
• Notice—For data quality issues in data reported by individual entities, the erroneous flag available in the XML metadata file of the EIOPA Central Repository Specification should be used by the national competent authority to indicate that a revision will be needed; alternatively, the national competent authority should send an e-mail informing EIOPA about the need for revision.
• Need for historical revisions—When an issue is identified, which would lead to significant revisions and which also affects back-data, revisions should be provided at least as far back as technically possible, given the operational limitations of the data collection infrastructure.

Data quality is crucial in any data management process. Data reported under the EU Solvency II framework for insurance and reinsurance undertakings are used by national competent authorities in the supervisory review process and by most national central banks as input in the compilation of insurance corporation statistics. National competent authorities also submit the supervisory information to EIOPA while national central banks submit the derived statistical information to ECB.

Related Links

• Press Release
• Common Minimum Standards (PDF)

Keywords: Europe, EU, Banking, Insurance, Solvency II, Reporting, Common Minimum Standards, Data Quality, SREP, Statistical Reporting, ECB, EIOPA