by Clive Jackson and Samo Boh
For example, securitisation and other loan transfers can change the outstanding amounts of loans on bank balance sheets, even though they do not affect the actual financing that has been provided to the real economy. Cash pooling, which is offered by banks to help corporate groups manage their liquidity more effectively, may also disguise real trends in credit supply.
Closely monitoring how much credit banks provide to households and non-financial corporations is key for monetary policy. However, there are several factors which make observing these trends difficult when deriving credit supply from bank balance sheets.
To account for these factors, the ECB has started to publish more detailed loan data that are adjusted for securitisation and other loan transfers, as well as for notional cash pooling. This adds to the adjusted data on loans for total lending to households and non-financial corporations, which have been available for some time.
Link:
ECB Data Portal: New data on bank lending to households and non-financial corporations