The Office of Financial Research (OFR) helps to promote financial stability by looking across the financial system to measure and analyze risks, perform essential research, and collect and standardize financial data. This work supports a transparent, competitive, and stable financial system.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-203) established the OFR principally to support the Financial Stability Oversight Council (Council) and its member agencies.
Mission
Promote financial stability by delivering high-quality financial data, standards, and analysis principally to support the Financial Stability Oversight Council and its member agencies.
Vision
A transparent, accountable, and resilient financial system.
Leadership and Staff
The OFR is led by a Director, who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for a 6-year term. The organization consists of a Data Center, Research and Analysis Center, Technology Center, Operations Division, and the Office of the Chief Counsel.
Data Center
The Data Center leads and supports global efforts to develop and improve data standards for efficiencies in reporting and analyzing financial data. The Center also produces and improves data products that advance the mission and vision of the OFR and its stakeholders while delivering data science driven, value-added capabilities that make our work more effective and efficient.
Research and Analysis Center
We assess risks to financial stability based on our ongoing monitoring of the financial system. The Research and Analysis Center (RAC) looks across the entire financial system to identify vulnerabilities, or underlying weaknesses, that can originate, amplify, or transmit shocks and stress that may create threats to financial stability. We report on these risks to the Council on an ongoing basis. RAC also shares our research and analysis with the public through publications on our website.
Technology Center
The Technology Center provides advanced analytic tools and computing power to support sophisticated data and research requests from the Council. It manages the OFR’s data operations, ensuring the secure and timely intake, processing, and storage of data. The Technology Center meets all federal data protection security standards, and supports OFR's mission with reliable and effective technology solutions.
Contact Us
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Congressional inquiries Media inquiries Feedback Small Business Specialist |
Office of Financial Research U.S. Department of the Treasury 717 14th Street, NW Washington, DC 20220 |
OFR New York 290 Broadway Floor 13 New York, NY 10007 |
Accomplishments
Joint Analysis Data Environment (JADE)
The financial system faces threats from multiple sources, and these threats do not adhere to regulatory boundaries. JADE is an OFR-hosted platform designed for Council member agencies to analyze risks to financial stability. JADE’s tools allow Council member agencies to conduct collaborative analysis. Key to this collaboration is regulators’ access not only to data but to the tools that will help them integrate and analyze data and ultimately produce interdisciplinary research as originally envisioned by Congress when the OFR was created.
Repurchase Agreement (Repo) Market
The repo market is a foundational component of the U.S. financial system, providing trillions of dollars of daily funding and facilitating liquidity for U.S. Treasuries and other securities. The repo market allows participants to borrow cash against securities pledged as collateral, with an obligation to repurchase those securities in the future.
The Non-centrally Cleared Bilateral Repo market, which we most recently estimated as over $2 trillion in daily volume , is the largest of the repo market’s four segments. It has been a blind spot for both regulators and market participants. As the only segment of the market that contains neither a central counterparty nor a triparty custodian, non-centrally cleared bilateral repo is considered to be a potential risk to U.S. financial stability. We have therefore established a new collection of transaction-level data, with daily reporting from financial companies with large repo exposures, scheduled to begin in late 2024. This, along with our existing collection of centrally cleared repo data, will provide regulators with a more complete picture of this critical market.
Financial Monitors
We produce and maintain a number of financial monitors, including:
Hedge Fund Monitor: This monitor presents a set of interactive charts that provide insights into different characteristics of hedge funds, broken down into six categories: size, leverage, counterparties, liquidity, complexity, and risk management.
Short-Term Funding Monitor: This monitor presents a set of curated charts that provide insights into different dimensions of how short-term funding markets are functioning, broken down into four categories: collateral, tenor, volume, and rates.
Financial Stress Index: This index is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global markets. The OFR Financial Stress Index is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average.
U.S. Money Market Fund Monitor: This monitor tracks the investment portfolios of money market funds by funds' asset types, investments in different countries, counterparties, and other characteristics.
Bank Systemic Risk Monitor: This monitor presents key measures of systemic risks posed by the largest banks, including systemic importance scores for international and U.S. banks, the OFR's Contagion Index, and more.