The Financial Sector in Ireland's National Accounts 2018

This publication is consistent with the Institutional Sector Accounts Non-Financial and Financial 2018 published by the CSO in November 2019. It also draws from the National Income and Expenditure 2018 published in July 2019.

The financial balance sheet (non-consolidated) account shows the stock at the end of each year of the financial assets and liabilities of the sector. A change in balance sheet position from year to year can be explained in part by the net transactions during that year. In addition, valuation changes, exchange rate changes and reclassifications can impact on the balance sheet position. The consolidated account data is available on the StatBank. Note, however, that estimates are not available of the stock of non-financial assets (property, equipment, valuables and intangible non-financial assets) and it is not therefore possible to estimate the net worth of each sector or of the total economy.

For more detailed information on the balance sheet see Assets and Liabilities of the Financial Sector Methodology (PDF 142KB)

S.12 Financial Corporations are corporate bodies producing financial services on a commercial basis. They can take various legal forms, with a range of ownership arrangements. Further details of the subsectors of S.12 and the financial instrument classes are provided in Assets and Liabilities of the Financial Sector Methodology (PDF 142KB)  The following subsectors of S.12 are available to view in StatBank:

S.121 consists of the Central Bank of Ireland.

S.122 + S.123 Other Monetary Financial Institutions consists of credit institutions (banks and building societies), money market funds and credit unions.

S.124 Non-money Market Investment Funds consists of all collective investment schemes except those classified in the money market subsector. Their business is to issue investment fund shares or units which are not close substitutes for deposits, and, on their own account, to make investments primarily in financial assets other than short-term financial assets and in non-financial assets such as real estate.

S.125 + S.126 + S.127 Other Financial Intermediaries (S.125), Financial Auxiliaries (S.126) and Captive Financial Institutions and Money Lenders (S.127). S.125 includes companies engaged in leasing and consumer and other lending, securitisation vehicles, derivative and security dealers, treasury companies and a range of other companies engaged in financial intermediation. S.126 covers companies which provide auxiliary financial services and other financial advisory and consultancy services, e.g. brokers. They are companies which are principally engaged in activities closely related to financial intermediation, but which are not financial intermediaries themselves. S.127 consists of all captive financial corporations and financial auxiliary services. These included trusts, holding companies, special purpose entities, money lenders and certain types of sovereign wealth funds.

S.128 + S.129 Insurance Corporations (S.128) and Pension Funds (S.129). S.128 consists of life and non-life insurance corporations and of reinsurance corporations. S.129 consists of pension funds.

For a full explanation of the variables in financial accounts see Appendix 4 of Institutional Sector Accounts Non-Financial and Financial.

The classification system is that of the European System of Accounts 2010 (ESA2010). The structure and explanatory notes on the Financial and Insurance Activities sector, NACE K can be found here (PDF 180KB) .

The data for the production value comes from joint CSO and CBI surveys primarily used for the Business in Ireland publication. More information on these can be found here.

Employment and Earnings Data

P35L administrative data
This publication presents employment data based on administrative data sources, namely the Revenue Commissioners' P35L dataset of employment. The Revenue Commissioners' P35L file contains a complete register of all employments and is the most accurate source of remuneration. It provides details of gross pay and the number of weeks worked in the year for all employments. It also provides the NACE Rev.2 classification which is used to split employments into the various subsectors of the financial sector. Before using personal administrative data for statistical purposes, the CSO removes all identifying personal information including the Personal Public Service Number (PPSN). The PPSN is a unique number that enables individuals to access social welfare benefits, personal taxation and other public services in Ireland. The CSO converts the PPSN to a Protected Identifier Key (PIK).

Exclusion of employees from average earnings calculations
For the purposes of the analysis of annual average earnings, the CSO excluded secondary employments earning less than €4,000 per annum, extremely high earnings values and missing employer and employee reference numbers. For the calculation of statistics related to employment rather than earnings, only employees with missing employer and employee reference numbers were excluded. Similarly, for Figure 9.16, where employment is broken down by earnings brackets, only employees with missing employer and employee reference numbers were excluded.

Full-year equivalence methodology
The annual P35L data records employments held for a wide variety of lengths, ranging from one to 52 weeks of the year. In order to mitigate the distorting effect which counting part-year earnings as full-year earnings would have, employees who worked less than 52 weeks in the year are combined so that 52 weeks of work is equal to one person in our results. Therefore, when interpreting these statistics it is important to be mindful of the fact that the term 'person' represents the statistical concept of a 'full-year equivalent person' defined as one year's worth of work. A person in our results could represent one real person who worked for all 52 weeks in the year, or it could represent a combination of, for example, 12 people who all worked in the financial sector for just one month each. These 12 people each working for one month, we assume, did the equivalent amount of work as one person who worked for the full year, and therefore they are counted as one full-year equivalent person.

Full-time and part-time employment
The P35L dataset used for this analysis does not provide information on the number of hours worked per week. Due to this, employment numbers presented in this publication include a mix of both full-time and part-time workers, the ratio of which is unknown.

Missing values
In some instances, the value for total employment in the financial sector calculated by summing the parts of two different breakdowns may not be equal. For example, the total calculated by adding up all the people in each age bracket is different from the total calculated by adding up all the people in each earnings bracket. These discrepancies are caused by missing values. For example, if an entry was missing a value for date of birth, it does not show up in any age bracket. If that same entry does have data for gross pay however, it will show up in the relevant annual earnings bracket, making the totals calculated from these two breakdowns slightly different.

Gender analysis
P35L forms categorise people by gender into men and women, with further gender classifications lacking. Therefore, data on other gender identities was not available to include in the analysis of this publication. Summing the number of men and the number of women gives a value that is less than the total number of people in breakdowns throughout this publication. This is due to missing values for gender in the PS3L data. Some of these values are likely missing due to the lack of an applicable gender available on the P35 documentation.

Average Annual Earnings in the Irish Financial Sector

Average annual earnings are defined as follows for group x in year y:

Average annual earnings_xy = total earnings for all people in group x in year y ÷ total number of full year equivalent people in group x in year y

For example, to calculate the average annual earnings for women in 2018 the following procedure is used:

Average annual earnings for women in 2018 = total earnings for all women in 2018 ÷ total number of full year equivalent women in 2018

As outlined above, in this publication the term ‘people’ refers to all types of workers (full-time, part-time, permanent, temporary etc.). It is important to note therefore that this average wage metric should not be deemed to be indicative of the average remuneration for a full-time employee working for the whole year. Instead, it is intended to show the wage differential between subsectors, men and women, and age groups in Ireland.

Mean average earnings rather than median earnings are presented in this publication for methodological reasons. As mentioned, full-year equivalent employment numbers are calculated by combining the records of those who worked less than a full year, and this grouping process means that the calculation of medians is not methodologically possible. While the mean is affected more greatly by extreme observations, as mentioned above, very high and low earners are excluded from average annual earnings calculations in order to correct for the distorting effect of the presence of outliers.

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