BLS - Bank Lending Survey Statistics - ECB Statistical Data Warehouse

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Dataset Level Metadata

BLS - Bank Lending Survey Statistics



ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
	Title	BLS - Bank Lending Survey Statistics
	Data source	The data comprises of survey responses of senior loan officers of a representative sample of euro area banks. In particular, it includes replies to 22 standard questions (18 backward-looking, 4 forward-looking) and additional ad hoc questions.
	Contact email address	Statistical Information Request form

TECHNICAL INFORMATION
	Dataset last update in SDW	2023-05-02 10:00:00
	Catalog	Download the series catalogue of the dataset BLS in CSV format, i.e. full list of series and associated metadata: Excel 2013 (zipped) or the earlier Excel versions.

SCOPE
	Data presentation - Summary description	The main objective of the survey is to enhance the Eurosystem"s knowledge of bank lending conditions in the euro area. The BLS provides input for the ECB Governing Council"s assessment of monetary and economic developments, on which it bases its monetary policy decisions. It provides information on the lending policies of euro area banks and complements existing statistics on loans and bank lending rates with information on loan supply and demand for enterprises and households. The survey addresses issues such as credit standards for approving loans, as well as credit terms and conditions applied to new loans to enterprises and households. It also asks for an assessment of loan demand. The survey is addressed to senior loan officers of a representative sample of euro area banks and is conducted four times a year. The sample group participating in the survey comprises banks from all euro area countries and takes into account the characteristics of their respective national banking structures. For more information, please refer to the ECB website.
	Data presentation - Detailed description	The analysis of the aggregate BLS results focuses on the "net percentage", which is the difference between the share of banks reporting that credit standards applied to loan approval have been tightened and the share of banks reporting that they have been eased. Likewise, the term "net demand" refers to the difference between the share of banks reporting an increase in loan demand over the past three months and the share of banks reporting a decline. In addition to the "net percentage", the ECB also publishes the weighted difference ("diffusion index") between the share of banks reporting that credit standards have been tightened and the share of banks reporting that they have been eased. The diffusion index is constructed in the following way: lenders who have answered "considerably" are given a weight twice as high (score of 1) as lenders having answered "somewhat" (score of 0.5). For further information, please refer to the BLS user guide on the the ECB website.
	Reference area coverage	All euro area member states participate in the survey.
	Sector coverage	Monetary Financial Institutions (MFIs). The sample group of banks participating in the survey comprises around 150 entities.

METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION
	Time period	Survey questions are generally phrased in terms of changes over the past three months (for backward-looking standard questions) or expectations of changes over the next three months (for forward-looking standard questions). There are also cases, where questions refer to changes over a longer period of time, either in the past or in the future (for ad hoc questions). The time period of the quarterly results in the SDW refers to the publication date of the BLS, e.g. both backward-looking and forward-looking data for the October 2018 BLS are published in the SDW as “2018-Q4” data.
	Frequency of data collection	The BLS is conducted four times a year, and published in January, April, July and October.
	Statistical concepts and definitions	For information about the naming convention (series key dimensions and metadata), refer to the BLS underlying DSD (ECB_BLS1) maintained by the ECB.
	Statistical unit	Data takes on values along a five-point scale, indicating in a qualitative way the strength of a tightening or easing or the strength of a decrease or increase: (1) tightened/decreased considerably, (2) tightened/decreased somewhat, (3) basically unchanged, (4) eased/increased somewhat or (5) eased/increased considerably.

STATISTICAL PROCESSING
	Data compilation	The results of the individual banks participating in the BLS sample are aggregated in two steps. In the first step, individual bank results are aggregated to national results for the euro area countries, and in the second step, the national BLS results are aggregated to the euro area BLS results. Amounts outstanding of loans to non-financial corporations and households serve as weights. All participating banks are included in the aggregation of all questions, even if a bank replies that a question is "not applicable" ("N/A"). However, banks that are specialised in certain loan categories (e.g. they only grant loans to enterprises) are only considered in the aggregation for these categories. For further information, please refer to the BLS user guide on the the ECB website.

DISSEMINATION
	Release policy	The data is disseminated to the SDW at the same time as the BLS website report is published on the ECB website. Please see the the BLS release calendar for more details.
	Dissemination format	BLS time series data is available via the ECB Statistical Data Warehouse(SDW).
	Dissemination format - online database	BLS data is structured in the SDW according to categories: "supply" and "demand" questions for the three loan categories covered by the BLS; and the category "ad hoc" questions, which is divided further into the specific ad hoc questions. BLS series keys are used to describe the underlying data in a compact way. Each dimension of a series key is separated by a dot "." in ECB series keys and has a specific meaning. For example, the series key below represents the net percentage change in credit standards (over the past three months) for the approval of loans to euro area enterprises: BLS.Q.U2.ALL.O.E.Z.B3.ST.S.WFNET The detailed coding structure for the BLS series keys can be found in Tables 1 and 2 of the BLS user guide and in the data structure definition on the ECB Statistical Data Warehouse(SDW).
	Dissemination format - publications	The responses to the standard and ad hoc questions in the BLS questionnaire are analysed in the BLS website report, which is published four times a year (in January, April, July and October) on the ECB website. It provides an overview of the development of bank lending conditions in the euro area and in the five largest euro area countries (Germany, Spain, France and Italy) based on the standard BLS questions for the respective survey round. Information on ad hoc questions is only available for the euro area. The website report also provides detailed tables on the euro area results for each question (see Annex 1 for the standard questions and Annex 2 for the ad hoc questions). In addition to the ECB website report, some NCBs publish their national survey results. Links to the national BLS results, as published by the respective NCBs, can be found on the ECB website.

MISCELLANEOUS
	Metadata last update	01/FEB/2022 11:29:39

BLS1 - Bank Lending Survey Statistics (historical)



ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
	Contact email address	Statistical Information Request form

TECHNICAL INFORMATION
	Dataset last update in SDW	2018-04-17 10:49:16
	Catalog	Download the series catalogue of the dataset BLS1 in CSV format, i.e. full list of series and associated metadata: Excel 2013 (zipped) or the earlier Excel versions.

METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION
	Statistical concepts and definitions	For information about the naming convention (series key dimensions and metadata), refer to the BLS1 underlying DSD (ECB_BLS1) maintained by the ECB.

Series Level