The European Central Bank has launched a pilot project to facilitate academic research access to data it collects from the financial sector, enabling eligible researchers to use anonymised bank-level information across the euro area. The pilot covers data on individual banks’ balance sheets and the interest rates they offer. Up to ten research projects will be supported in the pilot phase. Eurosystem national central banks will act as data access points through their research data centres, providing secure access to the anonymised datasets and, where requested, running calculations on researchers’ behalf. Different access modes will be tested during the pilot, with a review after 18 months to assess whether to establish a permanent infrastructure for research access to ECB data.