The National Bank of Ukraine has held a two-day working meeting with representatives from the banking community to discuss ways to overhaul financial sector reporting practices. The meeting held on 30-31 March 2016 was attended by over 70 participants. Among them, there were representatives from banks, associations of banks and banking software developers. The meeting also featured experts from the EU-FINSTAR project designed to provide technical assistance to the NBU.

During the meeting, Director of the NBU Statistics and reporting Department Mr Yurii Polovniov presented the Framework for Data Collection based on the metrics model, its quality control and the format in which data are transmitted. Mr Polovniov brought to the attention of the participants a new reporting framework that the NBU intends to put in place.

The new reporting framework will enable the application of state-of-the art technology and the adoption of reporting standards. In particular, this move will allow for the transmission of files in XML format with integrated data control, enable reporting agents to relinquish the practice of submitting data in paper format, enhance the automated data collection ability and data quality control. The NBU will also redesign approaches to the systematization of reporting.  More specifically, the NBU will  develop taxonomies that provide a description of indicators rather than a description of templates. For the convenience of banks, the NBU plans to use open communications channels for data transmission and establish a personal user account on the website to manage the reporting process.  The new framework will enable banks to use in-house software, which will engage more software developers to deliver applications  and contribute to the market development.

In his speech, Head of the Information Asset Management Office of the Statistics and Reporting Department underlined that bringing the reporting standards closer to the European standards is one of the key priorities of the NBU set forth in the NBU’s Comprehensive Program of Financial Market Development of Ukraine Until 2020. In particular, the central bank intends to bring financial sector reporting practices into compliance with prudential requirements set forth in the  FINREP/COREP XBRL frameworks and adopt unified reporting and information sharing standards.

The redesign is being implemented as part of the EU-supported project “Technical Assistance in Financial Sector's Priority Areas”.

Following discussions with representatives from the banking community and banking software developers, the NBU  took note of the proposals put forward by the meeting participants and agreed to take them into account in the follow-up work  on the redesign of reporting practices.