New Initiatives to Improve the Transparency of Securities Financing Markets in Japan: Publication of Statistics on Securities Financing Transactions in Japan

The Bank of Japan first published Statistics on Securities Financing Transactions in Japan in January 2020. As part of global efforts to monitor securities financing transactions (SFTs) in the wake of the financial crisis, the Bank compiles and releases new statistics on SFTs in Japan for the purpose of further improving the transparency of securities financing markets. Since those new statistics cover granular transaction data with various attributes, they provide detailed information such as statistical series by currency or by counterparty jurisdiction, which cannot be ascertained from existing statistics. In this paper, we look over a brief history of the global discussions on collecting SFT data as well as efforts on data collection in Japan. We also provide an overview of the statistics and describe some key features of Japanese securities financing markets that have become clear from those new statistics.