XBRL reaches tipping point

Abstract

A global standard for extracting data from documents such as financial reports, corporate actions, prospectuses, and proxy statements is about to transform the most paper-driven information domains in the financial markets: public reports of securities issuers, mutual, mutal funds and credit reporting agencies.XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is an XML technology that allows issuers to tag facts and numbers, thereby transforming information embedded in text, tables or footnotes within unstructured documents into machine-readable data. This technology brings the same kind of universal access to financial information that HTML brought to the Web. XBRL is a data standard bringing automation to unstructured documents, as opposed to transactions. As with other industrial technologies of the past, it is not the gauge of the railroad, or alternating versus (AC) v direct (DC) current that made railroads or electricity universal and transformational; it is the fact that the world agreed on the same standard.The US SEC annouunced rules requiring XBRL reporting requirements for all publicly traded companies, mutual funds, and risk rating agencies. Australia and the Netherlands have adopted XBRL for all government reporting, including non-financial statistical data. Stock markets in Japan, China and Korea have adopted XBRL reporting for trading companies.