Long abstract

About Statistics Publications & Documents Information by Country

The statistics presented are an extract from the database: OECD Financial Accounts , which belongs to the System of National Accounts (SNA) and which include the Financial Accounts together with the Financial Balance Sheets:

• the Financial Accounts, part of the Accumulation Accounts, record, by type of instruments, the financial transactions between sectors,
• the Financial Balance Sheets, corresponding to the final sets of information in the full sequence of the accounts describing the economic cycle, record the stocks of assets and liabilities held by the institutional sectors, and give a picture of their net worth, at the end of the accounting period.

The financial data presented in the tables below are available from 1970 onwards for the following 25 OECD countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

They relate to two institutional sectors only, the General Government (S13), and Households and Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (S14-S15)

Explanation Notes

The institutional units, which correspond to economic entities capable of engaging in transactions with other units, are grouped together into the five following categories, called institutional sectors, some of which divided into sub-sectors:

• Non-financial corporations (S11),
• Financial corporations (S12),
• General government (S13),
• Households (S14),
• Non-profit institutions serving households - NPISH (S15). 

To these five sectors, which together make the total economy sector (S1), is added the rest of the world sector (S2), which reflects transactions and assets/liabilities vis-à-vis non residents. 

Transactions, which describe the net acquisition of financial assets and the net incurrence of liabilities and stocks of assets and liabilities at a point in time, are grouped into a small number of types of instruments, most of them divided into sub-instruments.  Seven categories of financial assets, ordered according to their liquidity, are distinguished:

• monetary gold and special drawing rights (F.1),
• currency and deposits (F.2),
• securities other than shares (F.3),
• loans (F.4),
• shares and other equities (F.5),
• insurance technical reserves (F.6)
• and other accounts receivable/payable (F.7). 

All of them have a counterpart liability, except the category monetary gold and special drawing rights (F.1).  The transactions and stocks accounts also present a balancing item which corresponds to the net value (respectively net acquisition of assets less net incurrence of liabilities and financial assets less liabilities). 

Consolidated financial accounts, in which transactions (and stocks) of assets and liabilities between sub-sectors of the same sector and between institutional units of the same sub-sector are eliminated, take better account of the financial position of the various economic players and therefore can be more useful than non-consolidated financial accounts, for some types of analyses, and in particular for financial corporations (S12) and for general government (S13).