Indirect Instruments of Prudential Supervision

The qualifying of supervision as “prudential” is used to differentiate it from other forms of supervision, which regards issues related to banking consumer protection. In order to achieve its goal, prudential supervision needs relevant information, provided mostly by the credit institutions their selves. Hence, the existence of a reporting system is essential, a system capable to insure, on the one hand, homogenity of the provided data and, on the other hand, its efficient processing. One indirect instrument which was used more and more during the last decade in banking supervision is represented by credit registers. The first system is directly associated either to the central bank or the supervision authority, and is, in most of cases, managed by the latter. The second system, the so called credit bureau, is mostly operated by private banks.