Country Exposure Lending Survey

What Is the Country Exposure Lending Survey?

The country exposure lending survey is a quarterly economic survey that breaks down all lending by U.S. banks and other financial institutions to foreign sources according to various categories

It is also known as the FFIEC 009 report.

The Basics of the Country Exposure Lending Survey

The country exposure lending survey is issued on a quarterly basis and is required for bank institutions that lend money internationally. The survey ranks borrowers by loan type, such as whether the loan is public or private, as well as by maturity, geographic location, and currency. The report provides this information on loans to over 190 countries and is broken down by country and region. The loans may be issued by U.S. banks, savings associations, bank holding companies, savings and loan holding companies, and intermediate holding companies.

The survey began in 1977 and was known as the FR 2036 report. Then, in 1984, it became designated as a Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) report and was renamed the FFIEC 009. It has been revised over the years to provide more details and to add items. The FFIEC was formed in the 1970s to create consistent principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of U.S. financial institutions.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) is an interagency body of the U.S. government made up of several U.S. financial regulatory agencies. The FFIEC was created on March 10, 1979, and is meant to promote consistent and uniform standards for financial institutions; the council also oversees the appraisal of real estate in the U.S.

As an interagency regulatory body, the FFIEC creates uniform standards and principles for examination of financial institutions by all five of its composite agencies. It further makes recommendations intended to maintain uniformity in how financial institutions are regulated at the federal level.

FFIEC 009

The FFIEC 009 report consists of four schedules; one of these schedules contains two parts. The schedules deal with the following: claims on an immediate risk basis, claims on an ultimate risk basis and memorandum items, foreign-office liabilities, off-balance-sheet items, and claims from positions in derivatives contracts. The individual reports are confidential; however, the total data, and not the specific activities of individual banks, are not confidential and are made public.

The data collected in the survey also indicate credit and related risks such as country risk. There is a supplement report (FFIEC 009.a) that must be filed to provide specific information about the institutions’ exposures in certain countries. Each report must be signed and certified by an executive officer of the institution reporting the loans.