DataTracks at XBRL International, Copenhagen

The 28th Annual XBRL International Conference concluded yesterday in Copenhagen, Denmark. As a meeting ground for the various stakeholders that make up the XBRL – and, in fact, more broadly, the Open and Standard Data – ecosystem, the conference was a huge success.

With the rather austere theme of ‘Achieving Accountability and Transparency with Structured Data’, this year’s XBRL International Conference focused on accountability, which after all, is one of the most-cited reasons for using XBRL. Adam Farkas, Executive Director, European Banking Authority and a keynote speaker at the Conference, endorsed the significance of XBRL in the deployment of more stringent controls on banks and financial institutions to make them more transparent.

XBRL in Analytics:

A presentation by Campbell Pryde, President of XBRL US, showed how a familiar tool like Microsoft Excel is enough to perform fundamental analysis on data, and how the XBRL data that is available is helping in the automation of that analysis.

The Future of XBRL:

The Open Information Model (OIM) Working Group is playing a pivotal role in taking XBRL to the next step by moving from the existing XML framework to a JSON framework. This makes consumption of XBRL data easier due to multiple reasons, mainly compactness and compatibility with JAVA, Python and YAML. It is very encouraging to see the OIM working group working on a clear strategy to achieve two objectives:

  1. Seamless transformation of the existing XBRL data collected in XML to JSON (blind move to JSON should not make the existing data unusable); and
  2. Making XBRL future-proof

Success Stories:

The Danish Business Authority’s quick and cost-effective implementation of iXBRL showed wonderful flexibility and consideration from the regulator.

As always, DataTracks was a participant in this year’s conference too. It was a great opportunity to showcase our offerings and to talk to representatives of all the stakeholders in the XBRL community – companies, regulators, software and service providers and analytics providers.

The push for automation and shorter XBRL generation durations was a recurrent topic in many conversations at the Scandic Copenhagen, as was the increasing focus of many regulators on XBRL quality. With our automated CRD IV/Solvency II solutions, we intend to fully automate the entire XBRL reporting process for banks, investment firms, insurers and reinsurers in Europe. As a company that prides itself on the quality of the XBRL documents that we create through our full service, or help create through our flagship Disclosure Management System, it was heartening to know that there is excitement about this enhanced quality for XBRL documents.

All in all, XBRL International lived up to the high standards it has set over the years. From the variety of participants involved to the quality of the sessions, it was a very fruitful conference.

About DataTracks: DataTracks US is part of DataTracks Services Limited, leaders worldwide in preparation of financial statements in EDGAR HTML, XBRL and iXBRL formats for filing with regulators. With a track record of over 10 years, DataTracks prepares more than 12,000 XBRL statements annually for filing with regulators such as SEC in the United States, HMRC in the United Kingdom, Revenue in Ireland, ACRA in Singapore and MCA in India.

To find out more about DataTracks, visit www.datatracks.com or send an email to enquiry@datatracks.com The views expressed are that of the author’s and DataTracks is not responsible for the contents or views expressed therein. If any part of this blog is incorrect, inappropriate or violates the IP rights of any person or organization, please alert us at ceo@datatracks.com.We will take immediate action to correct any violation.