Last 13.06.2019 EIOPA (European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) and ECB (European Central Bank) published the Common Minimum Standards for Data Revisions agreed between themselves, the NSAs (National Supervisory Authorities) and the NCBs (National Central Banks).

Because of the integrated reported approach, Data Quality (DQ) is crucial in any data management process: data reported by the insurance undertakings are used by both NSAs in the review process, whose outcome is then submitted to EIOPA, and by most NCBs to fill in the insurance corporation statistics, delivered to the ECB. This leads to a need of a common understanding of the minimum level of DQ required.

By agreeing on common minimum standards, all authorities have aligned their expectations for the minimum acceptable level of DQ for the purposes of the different uses of data. The common minimum standards specify:

•  The request of revision
•  The synchronization
•  The timeliness
•  The explanatory notes and notices
•  The need for historical revision

[1] The common minimum standards should not prevent stricter practices from being applied at national level: the NSAs/NCBs still have the responsibility and the power to request that financial institutions revise data when necessary. As the XBRL validations cannot cover all DQ issues, it may happen that, after deeper controls carried out by the insurance undertakings themselves, data may be occasionally submitted a second time. Resubmissions are divided into (a) “revisions” (if data points have changed) and (b) “duplications” (if there are no changes in the data points, but duplications have been fixed).

[2] The synchronisation states that the same data have to be available at all levels (i.e. financial institutions, NSAs/NCBs, EIOPA, ECB) at all times: it is important to keep consistency between EIOPA’s Central Repository, the ECB’s statistical databases and NSA/NCB databases. Any revision of data should be carried out at all levels of the transmission chain so that all parties involved have the same data. Data should not be unilaterally modified at the NCB or NCA level, unless in exceptional cases (identification of wrong data and impossibility to fix them by the financial institution due to time restrictions).

[3] NSAs and NCBs shall send the revisions respectively to EIOPA and the ECB in a timely manner, reducing time pressure for business users who need high-quality and stable data on specific dates. Specifically:

• NSAs shall send the data to EIOPA within 1 week from the receiving or according to established schedules, but at least once per month.
• NCBs shall send the data to ECB as quickly as possible and at maximum before the closing of the next production period

[4] NSAs and NCBs shall send a note explaining what trigger the revision of aggregated data in case of all non-routine revisions and significant routine revisions. In case of DQ issues reported by individual entities, the NSAs shall either use the erroneous flag available in the XML metadata file of the EIOPA Central Repository Specification or email EIOPA to informing of the need for revision.

[5] Back data should be revised at least as far back as technically possible, given the operational limitations of the data collection infrastructure, where an issue is identified and supposed to lead to significant revisions, which could also affect the past. Ә%