A Mission-Focused Year at OFR

Reviewing my first year as Director of the Office of Financial Research (OFR or Office), I am proud of the consequential work that our team has accomplished. However, we are not done yet and I am confident that our path forward will continue to find OFR leading the development and advancement of research insights and data services for the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC).

Congress established our Office principally to support the FSOC and its member agencies. We reliably deliver this support through a number of services, which include recommendations for and procurement of germane data, the development of firmly-grounded and empirically-supported research insights, and advancement of monitoring tools to better gauge and understand vulnerabilities to our financial system.

Moreover, our progress in building a Financial Instrument Reference Database (FIRD) has advanced considerably during the past year. Mandated a decade ago by the Dodd-Frank Act, this public-serving data product largely lied dormant before my confirmation. In addition, our Office’s international leadership within the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) continues to enhance data standards that can bring greater transparency and efficiency to financial markets worldwide.

As COVID-related financial and economic disruptions evolve, our data products are providing timely indicators of financial stress at home and abroad. Since late May, OFR’s Financial Stress Index (FSI) has shown stresses retreating to pre-COVID crisis levels. Throughout, our Office has and will continue to monitor, analyze, and share timely research and data insights with our FSOC colleagues.

Finally, our Office recently published a Strategic Plan for 2020-2024. Grounded in the text of Dodd-Frank, it establishes our strategy for advancing even further the accomplishments we achieved over the last 12 months. In doing so, we will further our support of the FSOC and its members by continually building on our Office’s organizational excellence through a culture of accountability and professionalism at every level.

Dino Falaschetti

OFR Director

July 2020