The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's has rolled out a new call-reporting modernization project based on the use of Extensible Business Reporting Language.
XBRL is a technology that tags financial information through disparate applications and carries it through the business reporting chain, can lower costs and provide enhanced analytical capabilities for users, preparers and consumers of financial statements . The Securities and Exchange Commission is working on efforts to standardize the language's use for the filing of public company and investment company financial reports.
UBmatrix, a provider of software and services that utilizes Extensible Business Reporting Language software and services , played a development role in the rollout. A team of developers and XBRL experts from UBmatrix worked with three federal regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, to launch the new XBRL-based reporting system. UBmatrix contributed packaged software, software development and XBRL domain expertise to the effort, which aims to streamline and improve the collection, validation and publication of bank financial data.
The effort is the largest so far to require the use of XBRL by a number of organizations, and is expected to process 8,000 call reports each quarter.
"Bank regulators have to analyze and validate quarterly financial data from 8,000 banks, consisting of some 26 schedules and over 2,000 data elements," said director of financial services at UBmatrix Phil Walenga, in a statement. "One of the biggest challenges both for the agencies and banks was addressing the nearly 15,000 data issues identified by agency systems each quarter."
Walenga said the XBRL-based system will allow for error detection and correction before the report is accepted by the system.
