XBRL: Improving Data Quality and Transparency in Singapore’s Financial Sector

Corporate governance of any company is complex and subject to several rules and regulations. Regulators, professional organisations, and financial reporting authorities all around the world consider XBRL as a tool to improve data quality and promote transparency of financial information. With positive findings from a research study, ACRA implemented XBRL in Singapore in 2007 for corporate financial reporting. The primary motivation for ACRA’s XBRL adoption was the core value propositions of XBRL. Read on to find out how XBRL improves data quality and transparency in Singapore’s financial sector.

How is XBRL Beneficial for Singapore’s Financial Sector?

1. XBRL Improves Data Quality

Financial data is one of the key components of any business in the financial sector. Since data is tightly integrated into the financial services industry, it must be free from errors. High-quality, error-free, clean data allows customers to trust their insurance companies and investment banks.

The basic rules for quality data include data completeness, correctness, consistency across reports, and consistency with other sources. XBRL is a tool that automates these rules and delivers full data sets without any errors. Furthermore, data generated in the XBRL format is consistent across reports and with other sources, making data much more compatible and usable across the business.

2. XBRL Ensures Transparency of Data

With the adoption of XBRL, ACRA has implemented a one-stop portal for all businesses, improving the efficiency and accuracy of financial and business information reporting. With the enhanced availability and quality of financial information, this one-stop XBRL portal improves the transparency of financial activities in Singapore. Such improved transparency promotes a favourable business environment crucial to Singapore’s economy.

Transparency in financial data can help the key players in the financial sector, such as investors and stock traders, make investment decisions. Furthermore, the data in the XBRL format can also be useful to regulators, financial analysts, and institutions.

XBRL Preparation – The Way Forward

While XBRL plays a crucial role in improving data quality and transparency for all businesses in Singapore, companies can find XBRL compliance an added burden. XBRL can be a time-consuming process that may shift your focus from your core activities. So how to get the best of both worlds? By outsourcing your XBRL requirements to a trusted vendor like DataTracks.

With an experience of over 18 years, DataTracks has successfully prepared over 348,000 compliance reports for more than 23,400 clients. The experts at the company have in-depth accounting knowledge and stay abreast of all the latest updates and regulations by ACRA. So what are you waiting for? Contact a DataTracks XBRL expert @ +65-31-582-850 or email enquiry@datatracks.com.sg to know more about our services.