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| Basel II and financial reporting using XBRL |
Home >Basel II > XBRL >
The European Banking Industry and European Regulatory Bodies met in London
on June 29, 2005 to discuss improved digital reporting practices. They reported
that digital reporting practices are close to completion. A main topic was Basel
II reporting, using the open standard for digital reporting, XBRL.
Jose-Maria Roldan, Chairman of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors,
CEBS, was in attendance and explained that XBRL is important as it helps market
efficiency. He said, "By improving information flows we will introduce
greater efficiency, speed and integrity which will make the European financial
markets more competitive. XBRL appears to be invented for Europe with its many
pan-European banks and European reporting standards."
The committee of European Banking Supervisors is supporting the development
of the COREP dictionary and the FINREP dictionary, which will be used to support
the changes required for Basel II reporting as well as the International Finance
Reporting Standards (IFRS). XBRL should ensure that financial reporting across
Europe is consistent. The use of COREP and FINREP XBRL taxonomies will be free
of charge.
A large numbers of new software applications are being introduced and that
XBRL is being used more and more for various uses, such anti money laundering,
tax reporting and statistic reporting. Basel II will be a major beneficiary
of the digital reporting standard XRBL, and perhaps even Sarbanes Oxley regulations
for listed companies in the USA may be able to use some of the standards.
XBRL and IFRS, both serve to simplify financial reporting and they both represent
a great achievement. "The speed and the size of the adopting organizations
is phenomenal. There is obviously an excellent discipline in standards setting
within the XBRL consortium, since the achievement in making XBRL is extraordinary."
Key information from speakers included,
| Pierre-Yves Thoraval |
Deputy General of the Secretary of the French Banking Commission |
COREP is a new ratio, a new challenge and a new opportunity to reduce
the regulatory burden. It provides flexibility, consistency and standardization.
'Data deemed necessary for all supervisors, specific for a country and specific
for a regulator or even specific for a company can be combined. 25 countries
participate in finalizing the COREP taxonomy and the plan is to finish by
the end of the year. The use of COREP and FINREP XBRL taxonomies will of
course be free of charge.' |
| NBB National Bank of Belgium |
Peter Praet |
introducing XBRL for banking supervisory reporting and found that investments
and risks are very low |
| Tom Jones |
Vice-Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board |
illustrates the similarities between XBRL and IFRS, they both serve to
simplify financial reporting and they both represent a great achievement.
'The speed and the size of the adopting organizations is phenomenal. There
is obviously an excellent discipline in standards setting within the XBRL
consortium, since the achievement in making XBRL is extraordinary.' |
| Gérald Santucci |
Head of Unit "ICT for Enterprise Networking" of the European
Commission |
praised the role of XBRL in Europe in organizing the event and contributing
to the awareness in order to raise the interest for XBRL, 'the standard
that introduces tagging of business data and is appealing because of its
simplicity. Investors, growing in numbers, need to understand the information
put in front of them. However,' according to Mr. Santucci, 'there still
is a lot to do to raise awareness and to disseminate knowledge and best
practices. It is encouraging to see that large numbers of new software applications
are being introduced and that XBRL is being used more and more for various
uses, such anti money laundering, tax reporting and statistic reporting.
XBRL supports the shift from information economy to the knowledge based
economy and provides the necessary platform. It supports the Lisbon Strategy
for Europe to become the most dynamic and competitive knowledge based economy
in 2010. XBRL contributes to a single market through transparency, efficiency
and creation of public trust and contributes to the exploit the potential
of single market. There is no reason to wait any longer!'
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| Frederico Florez |
IT Director at the Bank of Spain |
is at this time executing projects to introduce XBRL for Credit Risk
reporting, balance sheet data, balance of payments reporting and banking
supervision. These projects will automate the reception of reports from
some 500.000 agents, which is currently a manual task.
Mr Florez, Bank of Spain, said that "all major banks in Spain are
currently implementing XBRL. XBRL is the only standard for business reporting
we will use in Spain."
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| Walter Hamscher |
Vice-Chair of the XBRL International Steering Committee |
Japan partners in the information supply chain worked together to streamline
corporate filing processes for the benefit of reviving the Japanese economy.
The UK Inland Revenue is introducing XBRL to improve customer service by
facilitating preparation of tax returns and filings. The US regulator Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) wanted real time data and save 27 million
dollar and choose XBRL to achieve this. The Korean Stock Exchange wanted
to attract foreign capital by making market information available in multiple
languages; which was realised by applying XBRL and resulted in a doubling
of foreign ownership with some of the quoted shares. The US Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) seeks to increase transparency in the financial
markets through XBRL, currently implemented as a voluntary filing program.
Hamscher: "What all these successful projects share with the current
COREP project is a tangible goal: reduce the compliance burden on 8000 European
banks. Also, this will give you as a multinational bank a ready to use common
internal vocabulary. And as a smaller bank you may choose to remain where
you are and report manually, or to use COREP and find that your regulator
might lower your capital requirement." |
| Fransesco Canfora |
Gruppo Sanpaolo IMI |
Various benefits of XBRL to the quality of communication and several
implementation areas
Implementing the standard in the banks infrastructure will solve efficiency
issues in Credit Risk Management, quality and efficiency issues in reporting
to various regulators and consistency issues in internal corporate reporting
and consolidation. we will certainly see the benefits of XBRL in the speed
of reporting and the quality of our analysis and communication with customers
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| Bruno Tesniere |
Conference chair XBRL in Europe |
Tools, taxonomies, and vision are there; It's time for the
banking community to implement! |
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Kurt Ramin,
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Chairman of the XBRL International Steering Committee,
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Ramin entices the public to focus on three things only: "Implement,
implement and implement. IFRS and XBRL support and reinforce each other.
XBRL supports all languages and provides automatic translation and can
be used to facilitate IFRS deployment. There are different approaches
to implementation. In The Netherlands and Denmark it's government driven.
In Spain it is driven by the regulator Bank of Spain. In some countries
it's driven by accountants. Whatever the model, it's worthwhile to use
each others experiences."
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| Luca Filippa |
Borsa Italiana |
advocated that transparency in financial markets depends on timely, relevant
and reliable information. "Up to the year 2000 all communications between
listed companies, the exchange and the investors and analysts was paper
based. Listed companies required streamlining of internal en external dissemination
of figures and they wanted to use one medium for many reporting duties.
Since 2000 we introduced pdf based electronic exchange of data. Now we have
a freely accessible repository of information related to the issuers and
their listing. However we want to increase transparency much further and
do that without imposing a large burden on the issuers. That is why we are
looking into XBRL. It will allow us to transition from document-centric
to data-centric information provisioning at low costs for issuers. We aim
to be among the first Italian adopters of XBRL. This year we will go live
with a voluntary program for XBRL based communication with a selection of
our issuers. It will provide more flexibility, reliability and timeliness
and we will have evolved from paper based to data based reporting within
5 years." |
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