MESRAP — the Dutch balance-of-payments return to DNB

In the Netherlands there is no balance-of-payments form. There is a profile. MESRAP — the Macro-Economische Statistiek Rapportage — is the single integrated return through which De Nederlandsche Bank collects the data behind the Dutch balance of payments, the international investment position and the financial sector accounts. What a firm actually owes depends on which reporting profile DNB has assigned it, and the profile decides the content, the frequency and the deadline. This piece sets out the legal chain, the profiles, the 2026 calendar, the taxonomy versioning, and the mechanics that get a report rejected.

1. What MESRAP is

MESRAP exists to compile several macro-economic statistics from one collection rather than several. DNB describes its outputs as the sector accounts, the betalingsbalans, the international investment position and a range of sector statistics. The sector accounts are produced jointly by Statistics Netherlands and DNB, with DNB responsible for gathering what is needed from financial institutions.

It is integrated but not universal. MESRAP sits alongside the Maand Effecten Rapportage (MER), in which securities are reported monthly security-by-security; MESRAP takes the same securities data at aggregated level, quarterly. It also sits alongside the separate Payment Statistics collection that payment and e-money institutions file under the ECB’s payments-statistics regime. Being in scope for one says nothing about the others.

MESRAP replaced the older DRA reporting. The last DRA reports covered data for 2021 — depending on profile, December 2021, the fourth quarter of 2021 or the 2021 financial year — and MESRAP has run since data over 2022.

2. The legal chain: Wfbb article 7, then RV 2022

The obligation is not a supervisory one and does not come from the Wft. It comes from Article 7 of the Wet financiële betrekkingen buitenland 1994 (Wfbb), the External Financial Relations Act, under which residents must give DNB the information and data relevant to compiling the Netherlands’ balance of payments — timely, truthfully and in a non-misleading way. The Wfbb backs that with administrative enforcement: a fine, or an order subject to a penalty payment.

Article 7 is the enabling power; the detail sits in the Rapportagevoorschriften betalingsbalansrapportages 2022 (RV 2022), which took effect on 1 January 2022 and repealed the 2003 version. DNB’s own factsheet states the purpose plainly: the RV 2022 exist to ensure DNB meets its obligations to the European Central Bank on balance-of-payments and international-investment-position statistics, and that the same data feed the Dutch IIP.

3. You report because DNB designated you

Article 2 of the RV 2022 is the scoping rule, and it is unusual: the Bank designates the residents who must report. There is no self-assessment threshold to apply. A resident who has not been designated can still be required to supply information, within a period the Bank sets, precisely so the Bank can decide whether to designate it.

In practice designation arrives by letter — DNB sent aanwijzingsbrieven to reporters when MESRAP was introduced — and the population broadly tracked the previous DRA population, with some institutions brought in that had never reported DRA. Two consequences follow. A newly authorised firm should not assume silence means exemption, because the designation may simply not have been issued yet. And a firm that has changed business model materially should expect its profile to be revisited rather than assume the original letter still describes it.

Three further articles are worth knowing by number. Article 5 imposes a notification duty on special financial institutions, investment funds and FVCs. Article 8 permits centralised reporting, and Article 9 the appointment of a representative — the routes a group uses to file for several Dutch entities. Article 12 allows deviating arrangements agreed between the Bank and a reporter, which is the formal home for anything a firm cannot deliver in the standard shape.

4. Reporting profiles

Article 3 sets out the profiles, and the profile is the unit that determines content and cadence. Under MESRAP: BAL, CSP, DNB, DTC, FVC, IC, IFM, IFQ, IFSB, KEY, MMF, OFI, PF and TURN. Separately, the CFI profile carries the CFI benchmark for captive financial institutions and money lenders, and the MER runs on its own four profiles — MRS-SHSI for holdings and issued securities, MRS-HOLD for holdings, MRS-CUST for custodians and MRS-SV for securitisation vehicles.

DNB’s own contact routing is the most useful published clue to how the profiles map onto sectors, because it names ESA 2010 sector codes:

For a non-bank payments or e-money firm that is not a deposit-taker, the relevant question at designation is which of those sector buckets DNB has placed it in, because that determines both the profile and which of the two quarterly deadlines applies. Ask at designation; do not infer it from the licence type.

5. Two deadline tiers, and the 2026 calendar

Article 6 splits the cadence three ways. The MER profiles and MESRAP profile IFM report monthly, within 15 working days of month end. Everything else in MESRAP is quarterly, but on two different clocks: DNB, DTC, FVC, IFQ, IFSB and MMF file within 15 working days of quarter end, while BAL, CSP, IC, KEY, OFI, PF and TURN get 30 calendar days. The CFI benchmark is annual, within five months of financial year end.

Those are not the same deadline in disguise. Fifteen working days lands well before thirty calendar days in most quarters, and DNB publishes the dated calendar so the difference is visible rather than computed:

The calendar accounts for Dutch public holidays, and DNB states that where its published calendar and the dates shown against the obligation inside the reporting service ever diverge, the dates in the service prevail. That is a useful sentence to quote at anyone maintaining a spreadsheet of deadlines.

6. Taxonomy versions and what “applies from” means

MESRAP is an XBRL collection, and DNB versions the taxonomy on an annual rhythm with roughly a year of lead time. The pattern is consistent and worth planning against: a version is announced mid-year, published in the autumn, and applies to reporting periods starting a quarter or two later.

• 2.1.0 — quarters in 2022
• 2.2.0 — from Q1 2023
• 2.3.0 — from Q1 2024
• 3.0.0 — from Q1 2025
• 4.0.0, published 2 October 2025 — from Q1 2026
• 5.0.0, published 2 July 2026 — from Q1 2027

Each release ships as a package: a DPM dictionary with annotated templates, release notes, a reporting framework, sample instances, a change list against the previous version, and the MESRAP handleiding. Version 5.0.0 publishes sample instances in both xBRL-CSV and xBRL-XML. Read the change list first — it is a spreadsheet of what moved, which is faster than diffing two taxonomies.

7. CSP — crypto inside the external-sector return

The newest profile is the one most likely to catch a firm by surprise. CSP covers crypto-asset service providers and collects the value of crypto-assets held and administered on behalf of clients. DNB published the documentation on 26 February 2026, and the profile carries four operational quirks:

• It was added to MESRAP from 2026 but is not yet in the XBRL taxonomy, so for now it can only be submitted in Excel, through the reporting service in Mijn DNB.
• It is quarterly, on the 30-calendar-day clock.
• The first reporting period is Q1 2026.
• For that first period only, DNB extended the deadline by three months — so the Q1 2026 report was due on the same day as Q2 2026, 30 July 2026.

A CASP authorised under MiCA in the Netherlands should therefore expect a statistical obligation that is separate from anything in its authorisation file, delivered in a format that will change once the taxonomy catches up.

8. The mechanics that get a report rejected

Three published rules account for a large share of avoidable failures.

The opening balance is not carried forward. DNB is explicit: for every report, the reporter enters the opening balance itself, and it must equal the closing balance of the previous report, or the system will not accept the submission. Only the very first MESRAP report is exempt. A pipeline that assumes the portal remembers last quarter will fail on submission, not on validation.

Rounding is bounded. DNB prefers whole euros and accepts a maximum of two decimal places. Amounts with more than two decimals are rejected outright — which is a real risk for any firm converting foreign-currency balances programmatically.

Access is eHerkenning, at assurance level 3. Reports go through the Dienst Rapportages on Mijn DNB, and log-in is only possible with eHerkenning at betrouwbaarheidsniveau 3. Obtaining that means an external application with lead time, which belongs on the critical path rather than in the week of the first deadline. Where a firm genuinely cannot meet the obligation digitally, DNB allows a postal submission by exception, arranged through the relationship manager. Article 13 of the RV 2022 puts the same rule formally: reports are submitted through a portal the Bank designates.

One more thing that saves a first-period scramble: every reporter has a test reporting obligation waiting in the reporting service, and after the first test submission the herrapporteren function allows an unlimited number of further test filings.

9. Three scenarios

The newly licensed EMI that heard nothing. An e-money institution is authorised in the Netherlands and finds no MESRAP obligation in its portal. Facts to rule: reporting follows designation by DNB under article 2, and a non-designated resident can still be required to supply information so the Bank can assess designation. What the team does: raise it at the first supervisory contact rather than waiting, and meanwhile scope the separate Payment Statistics collection, which is not MESRAP and has its own basis. Outcome: the profile is known before the first quarter it bites.

The group that assumed one deadline. A group files for a Dutch investment firm and a Dutch other-financial-institution entity from one team, and builds one quarterly calendar at 30 calendar days. Facts to rule: article 6 puts IFQ and IFSB on 15 working days and OFI on 30 calendar days; for Q1 2026 that is 23 April against 30 April. What the reporting owner does: build the calendar per profile, not per group, and use the dates shown in the reporting service as the authority.

The crypto arm inside a payments group. A payments group adds a CASP entity and maps it to the existing XBRL pipeline. Facts to rule: CSP is not in the taxonomy and is Excel-only for now, quarterly on 30 calendar days, first period Q1 2026 with a one-off three-month extension. What the team does: run CSP as a manual template outside the XBRL build, diarise the taxonomy release notes for the version that absorbs it, and avoid engineering an XBRL mapping for a form that does not yet have one.

10. What to do, today

• Confirm the profile in writing with DNB, not by inference from the licence type — it decides content, cadence and which quarterly deadline applies.
• Build the reporting calendar per profile. The 15-working-day and 30-calendar-day tiers diverge by about a week every quarter.
• Treat the dates shown against the obligation in the reporting service as authoritative over any internal calendar.
• Start the eHerkenning level-3 application before the first period closes, and name a second authorised person.
• Use the standing test obligation and the unlimited re-reporting function to rehearse a full submission before the first live one.
• Encode the opening-balance rule in the pipeline: it is entered, not inherited, and must match last period’s closing balance exactly.
• Cap amounts at two decimal places at source; more than two is a rejection, not a warning.
• Diarise the taxonomy announcement each summer and read the change list rather than diffing the framework.

Related: External-sector reporting compared across the EU · The DNB reporting channel · DNB statistical reporting — BSI and MIR · The Dutch payment institution licence