One of the criticisms levelled at XBRL is that all the benefits of using it are enjoyed by the receiver,and for those preparing the data it is simply an additional burden that is only done to ply with regulatory requirements.Whilst there’s certainly an element of truth to this in some cases,there are a number of notable projects where significant adoption of XBRL has been achieved without a mandate from a regulator.

The challenge for XBRL is that it’s all about providing more information.Not only do preparers provide the figures,but they are tagged so that receivers can do more with the data.Providing this additional tagging information pretty much unavoidably equates to more work for the preparers,but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not worth doing.

ONE BITE AT THE CHERRY?

In terms of sheer number of filings,the most suessful voluntary XBRL filing project has to be annual aounts filings to the uK’s panies house.In fact,prior to HMRC’s mandate for pany tax filings in 2011,it was probably receiving more XBRL filings than any other project in the world,voluntary or otherwise.The secret to the initial suess of this project was actually very simple:it was the only way to file aounts electronically.Prior to the introduction of XBRL,annual aounts had to be filed on paper.Whilst the benefits of one electronic format over another may be minimal from the preparer’s point of view,you only have to look at the huge number of everyday transactions that have moved online in the last 15years to realise that electronic filing in just about any format is preferable to both parties when pared to filing on paper.

The advantages of electronic filing in the UK were pounded by the nature of the panies involved.Favourable tax treatment meant that many sole traders inrporated as limited panies resulting in a very large number of small panies whose affairs were handled by agents.For these agents,the benefits of electronic filing were not about saving one postage stamp a year,but about rcing the very real st of producing and posting hundreds or even thousands of sets of paper aounts every month.

More recently,panies house filing numbers have been boosted by the introduction of mandatory iXBRL filing to HMRC.Although the aounts submitted to panies house and hmrC are not always identical (panies house allows many panies to file abbreviated aounts),once the work of producing tagged financials for HMRC has been done,the incremental effort of producing and filing iXBRL aounts to panies house is minimal.

XBRL and iXBRL filings to panies house are now running at around 60%of all filings,an impressive rate for a purely voluntary programme.The next step on panies house’s roadmap is to start making the filed XBRL data available to third parties.This may provide further incentive for panies to file in XBRL as it will improve the auracy and speed with which the data in their financials are available to credit reference agencies and other nsumers of statutory pany information.

RPORATE ACTIONS

The “tag once,file twice”benefit that panies house has gained from HMRC filings has parallels with another XBRL project that is making significant progress on a voluntary basis:XBRL for rporate Actions.

BNY Mellon has recently started publishing cash dividend announcements for its depositary receipts in XBRL format on its web a nutshell,a depositary receipt (Dr)is a proxy for shares in a foreign pany that can be nveniently traded in the domestic (in this case,us) currency on domestic stock exchanges.The Dr is issued by a domestic bank,which is obliged to publish information about actions,such as a dividend announcement,in a timely,aurate and unambiguous manner.

The flows of information for Dr information are plicated.An action such as a dividend announcement needs to flow from the issuing bank (such as Citi,BNy mellon or JP man)to stock exchanges (such as Nyse and NAsDAQ),clearing houses and regulators (such as Dt and FiNrA)tax reclaim agents (such as Globetax)and numerous other market participants –and this is just the flow downstream of the issuing bank.Upstream,the rresponding information on the underlying security originates in a foreign market and must be municated to the issuing bank,as well as other participants in that foreign market.

In this case plexity translates into significant opportunities for streamlining using structured data. The existing data flows typically use PDF or excel and involve re-keying at just about every step of the way,with associated st and data quality issues. As with panies house,in order to understand the incentives for preparers to create XBRL data, you need to look at what went before.At a number of points in the existing process,the preparers (the issuing banks)are required to re-key data themselves into on-line systems provided by stock exchanges and regulators.pared to this,producing XBRL looks like a very attractive option,and as we’ve seen in the UK,once you’ve created the XBRL once, using it in other places makes a lot of sense.The initial benefit to the banks may be in streamlining their filings to Dt,but once you’ve got the XBRL,submitting it to the stock exchange in the same format is a logical step,and allowing your tax reclaim agents to streamline their processes too can only be a good thing.Perhaps most importantly,once investors see the benefits in receiving data in XBRL,it makes Drs for which XBRL data is available that little bit more attractive.

CHICKENS,EGGS AND STANDARDS

The adoption problems faced by XBRL are far from unique.Just about any data interchange standard suffers from a chicken and egg problem.No preparer wants to create the stuff unless there are people out there wanting to nsume it,and the nsumers don’t want to tool up to receive it until there’s a useful volume of data to work with.

Twenty years ago you would have had a tough time writing the business case for a pany to invest in a web,and a similarly tough time trying to persuade a nsumer that they needed a web browser.

It shouldn’t be surprising that XBRL often needs the kick-start of a regulatory mandate to get things going,but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t often benefits to all involved.

中文新闻：XBRL：你的不二选择

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