In its 2016 annual report published in July, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) said that more and better data was needed to assess the potential systemic risks associated with securities lending and repo.  The super-regulator called for more transparency and better data collection from both lenders and borrowers in securities lending and repo markets. “Without comprehensive information on securities lending activities across the financial system,” the FSOC report said,"regulators cannot fully assess the severity of potential risks to financial stability in this area.” In addition, the FSOC recommended better coordination of data collection by U.S. regulators with their foreign counterparts, noting that “current estimates suggest that half of global securities lending activities take place outside of the United States.”  Better international cross-border data coordination is necessary because, "the extent to which particular market participants operate across national boundaries is not clear from available data, so it is difficult for regulators to determine how stresses in a foreign jurisdiction may affect securities lending activities in the United States."

As we reported in April of 2015, the Office of Financial Research, the Federal Reserve, and the Securities and Exchange Commission launched a joint pilot program to collect better and more complete data on securities lending.  At that time, the OFR, Fed, and SEC created a task force to reach out to agent lenders to collect data on loans, terms, and collateral uses. On August 23, 2016, the task force published the results of their joint voluntary data collection project.    

In their April 16, 2016 report, Review of Asset Management Products and Activities, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) requested that regulators make coordinated and permanent efforts to collect more data on securities lending. Noting that that current data collections do not provide regulators and policy makers with enough information to even know the size of the market for securities lending, the FSOC urged enhanced and regular data collection and reporting, as we all as interagency data sharing regarding securities lending activities.