The External position of banks (MFIs) shows the assets and liabilities of the banks in Germany vis-à-vis non-residents on a monthly basis. It comprises the assets and liabilities of German banks vis-à-vis foreign banks, enterprises, households and governments. The microdatabase contains further breakdowns of assets by recipient country as well as by type and maturity of investment. These data serve the purpose of observing German banks’ activities worldwide and are an important source of input when calculating both monetary and balance of payment statistics aggregates. They also contribute to the German submissions to the International Banking Statistics of the BIS. With regard to definition and valuation of the collected positions, internationally agreed concepts such as the currently valid 6th edition of the International Monetary Fund’s Balance of Payments Manual (BPM6), the  Regulations on national accounts agreed at UN level (SNA 2008) as well as the European System of Accounts (ESVG 2010), which is binding for all members of the European Union, are taken into account. Each line in the dataset corresponds to a report of positions of a monetary financial institution vis-à-vis a certain country in a certain month in a certain original currency.

The monthly external position report is to show all assets and liabilities vis-à-vis foreign banks,enterprises, households and general government. Moreover, positions vis-à-vis residents, in otherwords Germany, are to be specified as a memo item.In principle, the assets to be shown here are to be taken from the reporting institution’s books in thesame way as in the report for the Monthly balance sheet statistics. In defining the individual items,the maturity classification and all general reporting issues, the guidelines on monetary financialinstitutions’ reports for the Monthly balance sheet statistics are to be applied as appropriate.In principle, classification of the assets and liabilities vis-à-vis individual countries and sectors reported in the external position report is determined by the country of domicile and economic sector ofthe immediate counterparty. Immediate counterparties comprise local affiliates for which separatebooks are kept; their country of domicile and the economic sector within which they fall do notnecessarily have to be identical with the legal domicile and economic sector of the respective headoffice of the enterprise.Institutions subject to reporting requirements are to submit one report each for the domestic partof the institution, covering the overall external business of the institution transacted in Germany.