Quarterly Survey of Financial Institutions

Detailed information for fourth quarter 1992

This survey became part of the Quarterly Survey of Financial Statistics for Enterprises (number 2501) in 1993.


This survey collects quarterly financial information about the finance and insurance sectors, consisting of financial institutions, financial intermediaries, and other investment funds operating in Canada. Financial statistics focus on balance sheet and statement of income, retained earnings and changes in financial position.

Data release - -

• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

This survey collects quarterly financial information about the finance and insurance sectors, consisting of financial institutions, financial intermediaries, and other investment funds operating in Canada. Financial statistics focus on balance sheet and statement of income, retained earnings and changes in financial position.

Subjects

• Business performance and ownership
• Financial statements and performance

Data sources and methodology

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

In most cases, financial intermediaries are surveyed directly by Statistics Canada through structural questionnaires designed specifically for each type of intermediary. The following are surveyed quarterly on a census basis directly by the Financial Institutions Section of Statistics Canada: Chartered banks; Trust companies; Mortgage loan companies; Investment funds; Central credit unions; Trust companies' retirement savings funds; Financial leasing corporations; Investment dealers. Local credit unions are surveyed quarterly by a central organization within each province. While some provinces conduct a census, others may conduct a sample survey. In any case, a provincial census is undertaken each year. In the remaining industries, the financial intermediaries are stratified by industry and, within each industry, by asset size. All intermediaries above a minimum size are included in the survey. Intermediaries below this size are surveyed on a sample basis. The published universe data for insurance carriers and segregated funds are derived from annual data collected by the federal and provincial departments of insurance while those for financial corporations and business financing corporations are derived from annual corporation income tax data submitted to Revenue Canada - Taxation.

Error detection

Errors may occur in almost every phase of a statistical operation. Respondents may misunderstand questions, analysts may overlook inconsistencies in the reported data, errors may occur in the creation of weighting factors and manual computations. Data obtained through the telephone follow-up procedure may be incorrectly transcribed. All such errors are called "non-sampling errors". Some of the non-sampling errors balance out over a large number of observations. However, if these errors occur systematically, they will contribute to biases. In the quarterly Survey of Financial Institutions, non-sampling errors are reduced through the use of a quality control program which is applied to all aspects of the survey operation. Tabulations of aggregated data are further reviewed by subject matter analysts before release. For those industries not surveyed on a census basis, had the financial statistics been collected from the complete universe, different results would have been obtained even though the same processing techniques were employed. This discrepancy between the estimates is known as the "sampling error" of the estimates. In this survey, both the sampling error and non-sampling error are reduced through categorizing corporations having similar characteristics and size. Accordingly, each stratum maximizes the similarity of financial structure, size and operations. No quantifiable statistical reliability measures for those groups of financial intermediaries which are surveyed on a sample basis are available at present.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data which would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. The confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act override the provisions of any other Act, including the Access to Information Act, to guarantee the confidentiality of reported data of individual respondents. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.