Nonbanking financial firms’ assets hit P9.7T as of Q3 2021

Total assets of nonbanking financial corporations, including several government firms, stood at P9.7 trillion as of the third quarter of 2021, about half of the P18.9-trillion annualized gross domestic product of the Philippines at that time.

This is based on the latest Other Financial Corporations Survey (OFCS) of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which is intended to further enhance the BSP’s data capture of key statistics for the financial corporations.

The survey covers the accounts of the country’s OFCs, which are engaged in activities related to financial intermediation but have no banking functions.

These entities include nonmoney market funds of trust institutions, trust corporations and investment companies, private and public insurance corporations, holding companies, government-owned or controlled corporations engaged in financial intermediation.

Examples are the Pag-Ibig (Pagtutulungan sa Kinabukasan: Ikaw, Bangko, Industria at Gobyerno) Fund, National Home Mortgage Finance Corp., National Electrification Administration, Local Water Utilities Administration and Social Housing Finance Corp.

“The BSP further expanded the coverage of monetary statistics through the OFCS,” BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said in his latest weekly talk with reporters on Thursday.

“When consolidated with the Depository Corporations Survey (DCS), the OFCS will complete the statistical coverage for the entire financial corporations sector,” Diokno said.

The DCS covers banks, non-banks with quasi-banking functions, nonstock savings, and loan associations and the BSP itself.

The BSP chief added that following the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, regulators had to devise innovative ways to better monitor and analyze developments in the financial corporations sector.

“Through the DCS and OFCS, the BSP can holistically monitor and address emerging trends that may lead to increased systemic risk,” Diokno said.

The OFCS provides a more comprehensive measure of the claims and liabilities of the entire financial sector by examining the health of other financial corporations. The preliminary result of the survey showed that as of the third quarter of 2021, the total financial corporations’ assets in the Philippines amounted to P38.8 trillion, with the OFCs holding about a quarter of the total.