The website, a tool that makes relevant financial information available, is capable of monitoring the current situation and changes in the Spanish economy in great detail by relying on anonymised internal data from CaixaBank from over 18 million customers, 11,500 ATMs, and 700,000 point-of-sale (POS) terminals. The indicators thus represent society as a whole and the conclusions they offer can be used to get a jump on trends and identify differences between groups and regions.
The website includes a total of 850 indicators that are updated monthly thanks to the information provided by millions of transactions made using CaixaBank cards and POS terminals, and the nearly 6 million paychecks that are direct deposited with the bank. The data is processed using Big Data techniques to provide information that gives a real-time glimpse into Spain's economy, and that can help families and companies make decisions.
The information is further offered in different levels of detail based on the user's preferences: one format is simpler and more visual, with an infographic approach, and another is more in-depth, making it possible to interact with the charts for the various indicators. The interactive design makes it easier to interpret the data with smart legends and text that complement the graphic information.
The design of the Real-Time Economics website makes it easy to check the information in this new economic analysis instrument. Moreover, the internal data is processed using advanced calculation algorithms that guarantee confidentiality in terms of the internal data that is needed to build the various indicators.
The website offers data in five different categories:
The consumer spending category contains three sets of indicators: total consumer spending, in-person consumer spending, and ecommerce. This variable is analysed by taking into account purchases and payments made using Spanish and foreign cards through POS terminals, in-person or virtually, and ATM activity.
The inequality block contains benchmark indicators to keep track of changing levels in wages: the Gini index, income percentiles, income distributions, and Lorenz curves. The information on income is obtained using transactions in CaixaBank accounts identified as payrolls or unemployment benefits.
The tourism block can be used to analyse trends in domestic and international tourism, and spending by Spanish tourists abroad. Its calculation is based on millions of transactions made using Spanish or foreign cards on CaixaBank POS terminals, or with CaixaBank cards outside Spain. Similarly, CaixaBank Research has developed an algorithm to identify domestic tourism.
The wages block allows to analyse how fast wages are growing based on age, sector and gender, both in Spain as a whole and in the various autonomous communities.
The ratio of home ownership affordability provides information about the effort that households have to make to buy a home by comparing changes in home prices with changes in wages. This indicator is built by combining data on housing prices from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda with figures on wages from CaixaBank. It is calculated nationwide, for Autonomous Communities and provincial capitals.
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