Long Live XBRL!

Written by Conor O’Kelly     Posted on February 11, 2009

Conor O’Kelly is a member of the International Steering Committee (ISC) of XBRL International and Chair of the Jurisdiction Department for 2009. He has ten years’ background in global IT managed services, global project management, and strategic IT business planning with Hewlett-Packard and Ericsson. Mr. O’Kelly is a Chartered Accountant with an MSc in IT Management and a past member of the Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.

It’s fabled that The King is dead! Long live the King! was first proclaimed in France in 1422, when Charles VII ascended to the throne upon the death of his father Charles VI. 

It’s rumored that XBRL is dead! Long live XBRL! was first declared in Florida in 2009, as the changing of the XBRL International Guard took place in an uncharacteristically chilly Miami in January.

But the serious tone of the XBRL International Steering Committee meeting was unequivocal:  XBRL is no longer a spectator sport. The gears have shifted from “neutral” to “drive,” and even a passing visit to the renowned Miami Ink Tattoo Studio on South Beach failed to mask the businesslike tone of this ISC meeting.

What is different about 2009 is that this is the year when a number of heavyweight regulator projects move from concept, pilot, or voluntary filing into live production with mandated filing.

XBRL Initiatives Accelerate
Pressure mounts in all geographic regions for transparency and adequacy of controls in banking supervision. Only mere months after XBRL was touted as the solution to Enron, the global banking sector is coming under pressure to produce solutions for transparency and risk management woes. The Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) continues its flagship XBRL FINREP/COREP IFRS/Basel II program, now accompanied by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) project, as well as the increasing possibility of similar adoption in Latin America (led by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile). The US-based FDIC quarterly call reports program continues as well.

By early January, the influential IBM Global Data Governance Council called for submissions from banks, financial institutions, corporations, vendors, and regulators to create a standards-based approach to risk reporting in response to an industry-wide need for standardized risk data. The significance of Big Blue entering the debate wasn’t lost on any of the commentators mindful of its potential to influence global risk management, or the ERP vendors who have been waiting for demand to reach critical mass before also entering the fray.

The stage is now set for global enterprise XBRL applications to deploy in 2009 alongside the desktop drag-and-tag toolsets that have become a familiar client-side companion of data taggers around the world. Mandatory adoption along with the appropriate infrastructure investment will characterize XBRL adoption this year.  

Accept or not the criticism of US SEC Chairman Cox for being too slow in reacting to the Madoff scandal and the financial meltdown, he did champion the protection of the individual investor by mandating that all US SEC publicly quoted companies file in XBRL by 2011. Equally important, mutual funds (with $10 trillion in assets) along with credit rating agencies are mandated in 2009 to file financials in XBRL. In limited circumstances, they will also publish these XBRL statements on their company Web sites alongside their traditional paper-based financials.

Progress in Asia and Europe
In Asia, the influential Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) takes its place at the XBRL International Steering Committee table as a significant regional influencer, on the heels of their mandatory filing program for publicly quoted Chinese companies. Equally notable is Singapore’s Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA):  they have a regional mandatory filing program, have joined as a direct participant in XII, and will likely drive regional adoption in the Southeast Asia region.

The fledgling XBRL India jurisdiction will increasingly invigorate the near Asia market with the promise of offshore outsourcing of data tagging and the vibrant support for local Basel II-based banking supervision, led by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and other local regulators.

The work programs of XBRL Europe, the consortium of EU jurisdictions formed in 2008, continue to gather pace. The European Federation of Accounts (FEE) has mobilized a technical taskforce to examine the topic, and the equally influential Global Accounting Alliance, comprising nine of the world’s leading accounting institutions, has thrown the topic open for discussion.

Inevitably, the traditional chummy, evangelical XBRLfests are now a thing of the past. In June, the 19th XBRL International Conference returns to Paris, the birthplace of Charles VI, and it is focused on exploring real practicalities of global and region-wide government and regulation projects. Attendees are expected to bring real solutions to real problems. Spectators beware -- your day has passed. Le XBRL est mort, Vive le XBRL!