Assets of Australian-located Operations by Country

In March 2003, banks and selected Registered Financial Corporations (RFCs) began reporting their international assets, liabilities and country exposures to APRA in ARF/RRF 231 International Exposures. This return is the basis of the data provided by Australia to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for its International Banking Statistics (IBS) data collection. APRA ceased the RFC data collection after September 2010.

The IBS data are based on the methodology described in the BIS Guide on International Financial Statistics (see http://www.bis.org/statistics/intfinstatsguide.pdf; Part II International banking statistics). Data reported for Australia, and other countries, on the BIS website are expressed in United States dollars.

Data are recorded on an end-quarter basis.

There are two sets of IBS data: locational data, which are used to gauge the role of banks and financial centres in the intermediation of international capital flows; and consolidated data, which can be used to monitor the country risk exposure of national banking systems. Only locational data are reported in this statistical table and all assets are reported at market value.

Data are shown for a range of countries and regions. Similar data for a selected group of countries are also available in B12.1.

Country and regional groupings are based on the classification used in the IBS.

This statistical table contains seven data worksheets. Six present data for countries within each specified region, while the 'Summary' worksheet shows total international assets of Australian-located banks (and RFCs between March 2003 and September 2010) for each region, and Australia. In each of these worksheets, the data in the last column measures total international assets for the region. Total international assets for each country add to total international assets for the region. However, in some quarters, this cannot be directly verified because data for individual countries and regions have blank entries in order to avoid disclosing confidential bank exposures.

In the 'Summary' worksheet, the positions by region are summed to produce a ‘Total non-residents’ figure that represents reporting entities’ total positions with offshore counterparties in all currencies. The positions shown for 'Australia' are positions with residents in foreign currency.