Eurosystem national central banks will be required to report security-by-security portfolio data at individual institution level, with tighter deadlines for banks and investment funds
April 10th, 2026 – The ECB’s last Guideline ((EU) 2026/780) amends ECB Guideline BCE/2013/7 on statistics concerning holdings of securities, upgrading the framework through which national central banks (NCBs) report portfolio data to the ECB. The amendments pursue two related objectives, those being moving away from aggregated sector-level reporting to individual investor-level reporting for most reporting agent categories, and tightening the timeliness requirements for certain data streams.
On granularity, the existing framework requires NCBs to collect security-by-security data from reporting agents, including monetary financial institutions (MFIs), investment funds (IFs), financial vehicle corporations (FVCs), insurance companies, and custodians; but to transmit that data to the ECB only at the aggregate sector level. The amended Guideline requires NCBs to transmit data to the ECB at the level of the individual reporting agent for MFIs, IFs, FVCs, and insurance companies. For custodians, NCBs must report at individual investor level where possible, and at aggregate level where not.
The rationale behind this act lays on the fact that aggregate data proved insufficient during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, when institutions within the same sector responded differently to shocks in ways that could not be detected from sectoral totals. Individual-level data enables the ECB to identify contagion risks, better monitor heterogeneous investor behaviour, and track monetary policy transmission more precisely. The Guideline clarifies that the data covers only legal entities, and that no personal data on households is collected or transmitted. To this end, for custodian data, the household sector identifier has been explicitly excluded.
On timeliness, MFIs and IFs move to monthly reporting with a 28-business-day deadline after month-end, which is a significant tightening from the previous quarterly framework. FVCs, insurance companies, and custodians retain quarterly frequency but move to a 48-calendar-day deadline, shortened from the previous 60 days. A carve-out applies where national implementation of the underlying collection regulations does not yet support monthly reporting, or where individual institutions have been granted exemptions.
Additional technical changes include: aligned presentation of both market value and nominal value; removal of biennial quality reports following a ESCB Statistics Committee reprioritisation; and deletion of the requirement for MFIs to report portfolios of securities issued by the holder itself, on the grounds that this information can be derived from the improved dataset once individual investor data is available.
