Purposes of the dataset:
The elaboration of a more precise nomenclature of households' financial assets and the collection of more detailed information constitute an attempt to better identify and analyze households' wealth in OECD countries. The objective of the sub-classification of assets AF.52, AF611 and AF612 is to identify the relative importance of the various types of assets, classified according to the increasing risk.  The inclusion of supplementary categories of financial assets (AF613 and AF614) and of a selection of non-financial assets completes this information to better measure the real value of household wealth in OECD countries.

Households' assets are mainly compiled on the basis of national account.  They are reported by Central Banks or National Statistical Institutes.

Product coverage:
Table 7.HA on financial and non-financial assets of households includes a detailed breakdown of Investment funds shares (AF.52), Net equity of households in life insurance reserves (AF.611) and Net equity of households in pension funds reserves (AF.612) as well as some non-financial assets.

The finer breakdown of households' financial assets is consistent with the financial classification of the System of National Accounts (SNA).

AF52: Investment funds shares are split into subcategories of funds classified according to their main support: Money market fund shares, Real estate fund shares, Bond fund shares, Mixed fund shares, Equity fund shares and Other fund shares.

AF611: Net equity of households in life insurance reserves are split into two categories based on the support of the contracts: 'contracts in unit-linked vehicles' which can consist in equity, bonds, property, index futures, security, or any other sorts of funds, where the saver takes the risk and 'contracts, other than in unit-linked' or index-linked vehicles, which correspond to contracts at guaranteed rate (i.e. for which there is a minimum rate guaranteed with a possible participation in the financial results), where the insurance company bears the risk.

AF612: Net equity of households in pension funds are split into three categories of pension plans classified according to their status, 'Pension plans managed by autonomous pension funds', 'Pension plans managed by non-autonomous pension funds', and 'Insured pension plans'. To get more precise information on the types of funds held by households, these three categories are further broken down into traditional 'Defined benefit plans (DB)', for which the risk is borne by the manager and not by the policyholder, 'Hybrid plans', where the risk is shared between manager and policyholder, and 'Defined contribution plans (DC)', where the worker bears the management risk.

AF613: a supplementary category, Other pension plans, should include schemes which cannot be classified into the above proposed categories, such as end of career allowances.

AF614: the category, Unfunded pension plans is introduced to take into account special cases where some countries recognize a liability even if the plan is unfunded.

Non-Financial Assets: Besides the total of Non-financial assets (AN) owned by households, a limited selection of most important households’ non-financial assets which contribute to their wealth is included: Dwellings (AN.1111), tangible produced assets, Land (AN.211), a tangible non-produced asset, and as a memorandum item, Consumer durable goods (AN.m), i.e. durable goods used by households for final consumption.