Recent developments in restructuring the Austrian banking reporting system

The system under which financial data are reported to the Oesterreichische Nationalbank is being restructured to reflect developments in financial statistics and in the IT environment in recent decades, as well as higher demands on data quality and quantity in the wake of the financial crisis. The objective of the restructuring project is to improve the data quality, specifically methodological soundness and data accuracy, consistency and reliability, and at the same time to enhance flexibility and reduce the cost of the reporting system for both the compiler and the reporting agent. A data model – the basic cube – is being developed jointly with the banking industry. The theoretical foundation of the data model is the widely used Entity Relationship model, which serves as a common language for the formulation of reporting requirements. The basic cube could be implemented as part of the logical data structure of the data warehouses at reporting banks. It will be used to define future reports to the central bank. These reports are based on ‘smart cubes’ and must fulfil legally defined reporting requirements. The design of the smart cubes makes it possible to use the data for many different purposes at the central bank. The data model thus will effectively and efficiently cover nearly all reporting requirements and will boost data quality.