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Item 1: Interactive Data to Improve Financial Reporting
The Commission will consider whether to propose amendments to provide for corporate financial statement information to be filed with the Commission in interactive data format, and a near- and long-term schedule therefor…… Weds. 10:00am …
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A notable absence on the first SEC blogger conference call was Google Finance blog…
So I assume they are getting ready to roll out a cool new set of tools for Google Finance…
Right on Googlites… bring it on…
It’s Alive: Data-tagging Plan Expected Wednesday
The SEC likely will roll out a timetable for companies to begin submitting their financial statements in interactive XBRL format.
Alan Rappeport
CFO.com | US
May 13, 2008
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox is expected Wednesday to announce a long-awaited plan to mandate companies to file their financial statements in an interactive data-tagging format.
Also known as XBRL, for extensible business reporting language, the data-tagging technology could be a boon to information-hungry investors and analysts who would be able to more easily search and compare companies’ financial statements, proponents say. However, it could also cause headaches for CFOs, depending on how long the SEC gives them to turn their traditional, static financial statements into interactive, searchable documents.
The SEC has hinted at its plans, noting on Wednesday’s agenda that it will consider whether to propose an interactive data amendment to determine how any mandate might be phased in. Cox’s enthusiasm has been clear from the start, as he has relentlessly pushed XBRL as the keystone to his agenda for greater transparency.
“This will probably be one of the most important changes since the Securities Act of 1933 and when Edgar put filings online in 1996,” says Sunir Kapoor, a board member of XBRL US and CEO of UBmatrix, a provider of XBRL products.
Kapoor said he expects Cox to announce that the agency will take six months to get its interactive data team ready and that big companies will be required to file in XBRL format sometime next year. The SEC’s Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (CIFR), an advisory board, recently recommended that the commission mandate XBRL’s use and suggested the agency require all publicly traded companies to data-tag their financial documents using a phased-in schedule based on company size.
Prospects of a new mandate have drawn the ire of some critics who worry about the costs and wonder about the benefits of XBRL. Wednesday’s announcement could dash any last hopes for a future of static financial statements.
“The train has left the station,” Kapoor says. “The only question is really the scope and the timing.”
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/11361942
SEC chief to unveil data-reporting plan
Likely to call for transition to XBRL format
By Davis D. Janowski
May 12, 2008
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox this week will likely lay out a plan for U.S. companies to incorporate interactive data into their financial reporting.
The SEC on Wednesday will hold a meeting to discuss the use of extensible business-reporting language, or XBRL. During that meeting, Mr. Cox is expected to outline a strategy that calls for a gradual transition to the use of XBRL, starting with large companies.
The SEC recently finalized coded versions of U.S. accounting rules used to tag financial data digitally.
“With a complete set of data tags for U.S. generally accepted accounting principles now in hand, we in the United States are ready to go live with interactive data,” according to videotaped remarks from Mr. Cox delivered last Wednesday at an XBRL conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
“The preparer’s guide is there, the software and vendor communities are there, and even the viewers and investor tools are there,” he said. “Everything is in place.”
Mr. Cox declined to expand upon those remarks last week.
For financial advisers, XBRL will make it easier to comb through financial reports and, more importantly, to compare data gleaned from one report with those from another.
EASIER COMPARISONS
“They’ll be able to receive and manipulate data,” Sue Childs, executive vice president of Edgar Online Inc. of Norwalk, Conn. “In interactive format, it will be much easier to make comparisons across industries and even borders, as well as drill down within specific points of data.”
Edgar, which extracts information from SEC filings and resells it, has used XBRL to tag thousands of company statements for several years.
The benefits of XBRL will extend even further.
“XBRL should make not only the comparison of financial data far easier but also the publishing of that data,” said Glenn Doggett, a certified financial analyst with the CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity in New York, which is an advocacy arm of the CFA Institute of Charlottesville, Va.
The advent of XBRL will allow such data providers as Lipper Inc. and Thomson Financial, both of New York, as well as Chicago’s Morningstar Inc., to allocate fewer re-sources toward manually input-ting data into their own databases, he said.
As a result, those companies may be able to spend more money on analyzing those data, according to Mr. Doggett.
Advisers may also be called upon to help clients understand the data made available through the adoption of XBRL.
“You may have some retail in-vestors willing to look at this data directly using some of the simpler readers,” said Darren Duffy, global head of production at Lipper. “But most likely, they’ll want to go through their advisers for any sort of analysis.”
A MILESTONE
The widespread use of XBRL by U.S. companies would mark a milestone for Mr. Cox, who has been championing the use of the technology since the beginning of his tenure at the SEC in August 2005. Prior to joining the SEC, Mr. Cox spent 17 years in the House of Representatives.
“Interactive data has reached an inflection point,” Mr. Cox said in his videotaped remarks last week. “Today the most difficult challenges we face are no longer technological, but behavioral.
“Our main focus now must be on getting investors and other data users to be aware of XBRL and what it can do for them,” Mr. Cox added. “It’s time to get beyond seeing interactive data as ‘technology,’ and instead to see it as a tool, as help, that can make easier the work that companies and investors do every day.”
In March 2005, the SEC began allowing companies to voluntarily file some documents in XBRL format. Among those participating in the program are E*Trade Financial Corp., Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. and NYSE Euronext Inc., all of New York.
To see submissions from publicly traded companies through an interactive viewer available through the SEC’s public website (sec.gov). Click on “Interactive data, XBRL,” go to “XBRL viewers” and then to “Interactive financial reports.”
http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008558049452
Inside XBRL
By Davis D. Janowski
May 12, 2008
Extensible business reporting language, or XBRL, is a language standard used to communicate business and financial information electronically.
Like other standards — red traffic lights meaning “stop” or electrical receptacles that work with any manufacturer’s plug — XBRL isn’t a proprietary format, but a universally agreed upon way of doing things, intended to benefit all users.
In the case of XBRL, adoption of the standard is intended to increase the usefulness of business and financial information reported to government agencies. XBRL will make flat-text documents now filed with the government into collections of usable data elements. Ultimately, the standard will increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve productivity among all users.
As described by XBRL International, a not-for-profit consortium of about 550 companies and agencies worldwide that support the language, XBRL provides a computer-readable identifying tag for each piece of financial data. The tag contains its own definition of the data contained in it as well as the actual data.
An example of a typical tag name would be “Deposits Paid for Securities Borrowed at Carrying Value,” which is one of hundreds of data tag names that correspond to data fields commonly used by broker-dealers. These data fields are found within XBRL’s broker-dealer taxonomy, or comprehensive data dictionary, which defines individual reporting concepts specific to that particular business.
The insurance and banking businesses would have their own taxonomies, as would mutual funds.
Because computers can recognize information embedded in an XBRL-tagged document, as well as exchange it with other computers and present it in a variety of ways, XBRL will help advisers sift and make sense of mounds of data. Whether they do it themselves or subscribe to services that will do it for them, advisers will be able to compare mutual funds more thoroughly and more easily than in the past, for instance, once SEC filings are done in the XBRL format.
The days of burying important numbers in dense documents soon may be over.
— Davis D. Janowski
http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008890774490
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[…] of exposing this data in a manner that it can be aggregated with other XBRL paradigms such as the proposed SEC corporate financial statement information filing in XBRL … I’m thinking of suggesting that historic TRACE data be made available in XBRL also […]
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