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Abacus Consulting develops CaixaBank Research’s Real-Time Economics Portal

CaixaBank Research has presented today to the press the new data portal ‘Economy in real time’ that has been developed in collaboration with the companies Prodigioso Volcán and Abacus Consulting. The website is a pioneer bet in our country to monopolize the evolution of the economy through indicators of consumption, housing, tourism, wages and inequality.

Equipo directivo de CaixaBank Research

Part of the CaixaBank Research team, from left to right, Alberto Graziano, Senior data scientist for Spanish Economy; Judit Montoriol Garriga, Leads economist; Enric Fernández, Chief Economist, Strategic Planning and Research at CaixaBank; Oriol Aspachs, Director of Spanish Economy and Patricia Esteban, Strategic Planning Communication.

Presentation at the mythical Kio Tower

The official presentation took place in the auditorium of CaixaBank’s Kio Tower in Madrid and was led by Enric Fernández, Chief Economist of Strategic Planning and Research of the financial institution, and Oriol Aspachs, Director of Spanish Economy. The auditorium was attended by specialized journalists from the main national media (El Pais, La Vanguardia, El Periódico…) who had the opportunity to ask the analysts questions about the portal itself and about the economic forecasts for this year and next year.

Press launch and ‘off the record’ press conference

The official presentation took place in the auditorium of CaixaBank’s Kio Tower in Madrid and was led by Enric Fernández, Chief Economist of Strategic Planning and Research of the financial institution, and Oriol Aspachs, Director of Spanish Economy. The auditorium was attended by specialized journalists from the main national media (El Pais, La Vanguardia, El Periódico…) who had the opportunity to ask the analysts questions about the portal itself and about the economic forecasts for this year and next year.

According to Oriol Aspach, the secret of the portal “is in the mass”, as the tool analyzes through Big Data the millions of monthly operations carried out by its customers, from 11,500 ATMs and 700,000 points of sale.

With some 850 indicators that will be updated every month, the objective of CaixaBank Research’s research service is that the digital tool serves to make the ‘best decisions’, anticipating the country’s economic trends, as pointed out at the press conference by the director of Strategic Planning, Enric Fernandez.

Development of the portal ‘made in Abacus Consulting’.

Abacus Consulting has been in charge of the technical development of the web application: from the preparation of the data to the visualization of the different statistical data series. This long project has been carried out in successive phases: creation of dictionaries, standardization and homogenization of data based on card expenditures, prototyping and design, and final development.

El monitor de consumo toma el pulso a la actividad española, semana a semana, a partir de los pagos con tarjetas.

The consumer monitor takes the pulse of Spanish activity, week by week, based on card payments.

The national press moments before the presentation of the portal ‘Ecomomy in real time’ in the auditorium of the Kio Tower of CaixaBank. At the table, from left to right, Judit Motoriol, Economics, Enric Fernández, Chief Economist, Oriol Aspachs, Economics Director, and Virginia Zafra, Communications Director.

Statistics and data analysis for synthesizing social and economic information

Judit Montoriol, Lead Economist at CaixaBank Research, was in charge of guiding the attendees through the different indicators and emphasized that “we work analyzing our data to synthesize them in the indicators that today we put at your disposal in the Economy portal in real time, so that you can have relevant economic information in an accessible, easy and immediate way”.

A new commitment to interactivity

Oriol Aspachs highlighted the richness of the data offered to interpret trends in the Spanish economy as well as the effort of the entire team to achieve an accessible and fully interactive tool. The application allows the download of data in CSV format as well as visualizations in PDF format and is fully available in three languages: Spanish, Catalan and English.

Constantly updated indexes

The consumption series offers three indicators: total consumption, on-site consumption and e-commerce. The analysis of this variable takes into account the expenses and withdrawals of Spanish and foreign cards made through POS terminals, whether on-site or virtual, or ATMs.

The inequality series provides the benchmark indicators for tracking the evolution of wage income differentials: the Gini index, income percentiles, income distributions and the Lorenz curve. The information on salary income is obtained from CaixaBank account movements in terms of payroll or unemployment benefits without including data on income from pensions or the Minimum Vital Income.

The tourism data allows us to analyze the evolution of domestic and international tourism, as well as the spending of Spanish tourists abroad. Its calculation is based on millions of transactions made with Spanish or foreign cards at CaixaBank POS terminals, or with CaixaBank cards outside Spain. An algorithm has also been developed to identify domestic tourism.

With regard to salaries, we can analyze the rate at which salary income grows according to age, sector and sex, both in Spain and in the different autonomous communities.

Finally, the homeownership affordability ratio provides information on the effort that households must make to be able to purchase a home by comparing the evolution of housing prices with the evolution of wage income. To construct this indicator, housing price data from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda is combined with salary income figures from CaixaBank. It is calculated at the national, autonomous community and provincial capital levels.

Judit Montoriol, lead economist de CaixaBank Research; Enric Fernández, director de Planificación Estratégica y Estudios y Economista Jefe; y Oriol Aspachs, director de Economía Española durante la presentación del Portal de Economía en Tiempo Real.

Judit Montoriol, lead economist at CaixaBank Research; Enric Fernández, director of Strategic Planning and Research and Chief Economist; and Oriol Aspachs, director of Spanish Economy during the presentation of the Real-Time Economy Portal.

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