On 9 December 2019, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published updated guidelines on harmonised definitions and templates for the reporting of funding plans of credit institutions.

The guidelines have been drafted in accordance with Article 16 of the Regulation establishing the EBA, which mandates the European Supervisory Authority to seek to establish consistent, efficient and effective supervisory practices by harmonising templates and definitions. The update is based on experience gained through analysing the data received as well as due to the questions raised via the EBA Single Rulebook Q&A tool.

The EBA states that the alignment of definitions and wordings with those used in the Financial Reporting Framework (FINREP) will reduce uncertainty regarding its implementation, increase comparability of data and streamline the data-reporting process to facilitate more automatic validations. The EBA believes that the updated guidelines will improve the relevance of the assessment of funding plans through increased granularity and additional data items to enable funding plan assessments that reflect the most relevant market issues. The guidelines also introduce some simplifications for small and non-complex institutions to enhance proportionality and reduce reporting costs.

The first reporting reference date will be 31 December 2020. The guidelines will form part of the version 2.10 reporting framework release. The EBA will publish the related technical package in early 2020.