Annex V, Part 1.42 of the ITS on Supervisory Reporting defines the counterparty sectors according to which transactions shall be broken down in FINREP. However, these general harmonised definitions do not cover specific individual cases and constellations in individual EU countries and require further national supervisory explanations for reporting purposes.

EBA has specified the classification into counterparty sectors in various Q&As (e.g. Q&A 2017_3424, Q&A 2015_1758, Q&A 2018_4276). Within these Q&A, EBA generally uses the classification of the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010) as the basis for the classification into counterparty sectors. BaFin and Deutsche Bundesbank base the FINREP related classification of specific cases analogously according to the classification of the ESA 2010 – irrespective of whether IFRS or nGAAP is the relevant accounting standard. Deutsche Bundesbank has published more detailed information on the counterparty sector classification for ESA 2010 on its website under the heading Customer Classification.

For clarification purposes on the counterparty sector "credit institutions", following the ESA 2010 classification, this sector should be defined as "Monetary Financial Institutions (MFIs)" for FINREP reporting, unless otherwise specified in Annex V of the ITS on Supervisory Reporting or EBA Q&As.

Self-employed natural persons, sole proprietors, freelancers and civil-law associations consisting exclusively of natural persons should be classified as “households” for supervisory reporting purposes. In contrast, these customers cannot be categorised as “corporations” or “quasi-corporations” in accordance with the ESA 2010 classification and therefore a classification as “other financial corporations” or “non-financial corporations” for supervisory purposes is also not appropriate.

These guidelines apply as long as the EBA has not provided further harmonised specification or clarification in Annex V of the ITS on Supervisory Reporting or elsewhere.