Graeme Walker
OECD Working Party on Financial Statistics, Paris, 3 rd November 2009

• Introduction
– Origins of the project
– Aims
• Four sections to the paper
– Main findings
• What happens now

• Paper is a summary of articles published in
July
• Project set up in response to Financial Crisis
• Helps ONS fulfil three roles
– Providing additional tools for policy makers
– Keeping pace with financial innovation
– Support the transparency agenda

• Output and employment in Financial Sector
• Corporate Sector balance sheets
• Household savings and wealth
• Public sector balance sheet

• Lack of coherence between output and employment in some sub sectors
• Gaps in output indicators
– Hedge funds
– SPVs
– Derivitives
• Some issues relating to deflation

• Incomplete coverage leads to deficiencies in balance sheets
• Some financial instruments not covered
• Sources for corporate liabilities particularly weak
• Household sector source not yet developed
– Household assets survey

• MFIs newly classified to the public sector
– Revised presentation
– Difficulty of classifying subsidiaries
• New government interventions to classify
• Presenting broader measures of public sector debt

• Need for collaboration with other fiscal departments
• Long lead time for improvements particularly where new data sources are needed
• ONS prioritising this work in 2009/10
– Some improvements planned for 2010 Blue Book
– Derivatives
– Securities dealers
• Aiming to introduce more improvements into 2011
“Blue Book”
– Corporate bonds