The UK's Financial Services Authority has broken ranks with the international movement to standardise electronic financial reporting around the extensible business reporting language, XBRL.
In a statement issued last week, the UK's financial regulator said it had determined that XBRL "is not the most appropriate technology for the FSA or UK financial services regulation at the current time".
As the FSA's document made clear, XBRL is the preferred route for a number of regulatory bodies, most notably the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which now accepts and publishes accounts in XBRL format via its EDGAR online reporting service.
Unlike the SEC, the FSA's role is not about publishing financial information, but about regulating the companies that operate within financial services. Its XBRL briefing note explained that its own reporting systems require 150 different forms, containing 12,000 different data items.
With little available XBRL expertise in the UK, the FSA said that developing its own systems could incur additional costs and risks for its internal systems. Existing FSA mechanisms have been developed using "standard" XML and it decided to stick with this format as the best option to meet its current needs.
The FSA will continue to monitor the development of XBRL and said it was taking steps to ensure that its XML-based architecture would be able to translate into XBRL transformation should the need arise in the future.
The FSA statement was released in the week leading up to a major XBRL conference hosted in Philadelphia by the XBRL consortium. Taking part in the event were SEC chairman Christopher Cox, who was due to deliver the keynote speech on Tuesday, along with professional figureheads such as International Accounting Standards Board chairman Sir David Tweedie, US Financial Accounting Standards Board chairman Bob Herz and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants president Barry Melancon.
XBRL counts among its supporters companies like Microsoft and General Electric as well as the Big Four accountancy firms. IASB commercial director Kurt Ramin also chairs the XBRL International steering committee and the ICAEW's IT Faculty acts as national XBRL co-ordinator for the UK.
