Loans to Companies YoY

Loans to Companies YoY is the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to non-financial corporations in the euro area. It is published monthly by the European Central Bank (ECB) from reports of all resident monetary financial institutions. Coverage is a near census, reaching at least 95% of each national balance sheet. The headline series is adjusted: it adds back securitised loans sold off balance sheets and removes notional cash pooling balances. It measures net transactions only, never gross new signings. It does not track interest rates, credit standards, bonds or non-bank lending.

Loan stocks refer to the last day of the reference month. Central banks report by the 15th working day after month-end. The ECB publishes euro area results on the 19th working day at 10:00 Frankfurt time. National data stay embargoed until then, and dates come pre-announced.

The release also covers M1, M2 and M3 money aggregates, deposits by sector and sibling loan series. It carries three standard charts and annex tables showing a snapshot at release time. Full series appear in the BSI dataset. Figures can be revised later through ordinary updates or exceptional corrections with advance notice.

Growth moves with the original maturity split of company loans.

• Loans up to 1 year: short-term credit including overdrafts, sensitive to cash pooling mechanics.
• Loans over 1 year up to 5 years: medium-term investment loans.
• Loans over 5 years: long-term loans, the largest stock.

The ECB published October 2023 data on November 28, 2023, when adjusted loans to companies fell to -0.3% from +0.2% in September. In the same release adjusted loans to the private sector rose to +0.4% from +0.2%. Household loans slowed to +0.6% from +0.8%.

Broad money M3 stood at -1.0% against -1.2%, and credit to government at -2.6%. The lesson is that company lending can fall while total private lending rises, so never read it off the total.

1. Transactions: Subtract non-lending changes from the stock move: reclassifications, write-offs and price changes, and exchange rate shifts.
2. Adjusted stocks and flows: Add back derecognised securitised loans still serviced by banks, settle their repayments, and subtract notional cash pooling balances.
3. Notional index: Chain transactions into an index set at 100 in a base period. The base level never affects growth. From adjusted stocks of 5,000 billion euro, a 12 billion rise faces 1 billion of reclassifications and 2 billion of write-downs. With zero exchange effects, transactions equal 9 billion. That lifts the index from 112.40 to 112.6023.
4. Annual growth: Compare the index with its value 12 months earlier. An index of 112.6023 against 108.10 gives about 4.2%. Month on month growth uses the same index over 1 month, never raw stocks.
5. Seasonal adjustment: Apply X-12-ARIMA or X-13-ARIMA filters at euro area level. They remove seasonal and end of month calendar effects, directly or through components to keep additivity. Release data use this adjusted version unless stated otherwise.