The CEO of Vanguard published a similar letter in August 2017
More than 100 regulators in more than 70 countries have mandated the use of XBRL for financial and business reporting which includes financial, tax or government data used to drive both the capital markets and government services. As regulators, investors, companies, government and analysts increasingly use XBRL data for their analyses the market need for digital assurance of the specific reported data elements using XBRL will increase – especially as data is separated from original disclosure documents and mashed into new reports and data analytic surveys
A bankruptcy, an acquisition, or other circumstances can affect your vendor and render them unable or unwilling to continue providing the software services under your subscription/license. To mitigate this risk, 3 rd -party professional technology escrow firms provide escrow services which are typically paid for by the software vendor and which “name” each customer as a party to the escrow agreement
In the UK – HMRC (Tax Authority) requires corporations to file in the iXBRL data format – a structured data format like XBRL
Under the DATA Act, after Treasury & OMB agree on a common data standard -- federal agencies will have two years to start reporting their financial information in hopefully the XBRL data format. We will provide information as it comes available. This effort creating a common data format so tagged information can be computer-readable could be a potential opportunity for management accountants involved in government reporting and will spawn a new sector of accounting IT professionals. As one of the founding members of the XBRL Consortium the IMA has been a big supporter of the DATA ACT
1 Comment - I found a recent report card on Freedom of Information Act performance by some government agencies an interesting argument for more data transparency - one of the agencies in David's story is Health and Human Services, which unfortunately was awarded an "F" in how responsive it was to FOIA requests. I just wonder if perhaps interactive data will provide a public service at a lower cost in this era of greater need and request for information about the government's activities
New US SEC Reg A+ to Help Smaller Companies Access Investment Capital via Crowdfunding Using Social Media, Big Data and Cloud Technologies On March 25, 2015 the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it has adopted rules to facilitate smaller companies' access to capital, as mandated by the JOBS Act approved by Congress and signed into law by the President on April 5, 2012. Sums of up to $20 million can be raised in a Tier 1 offering, while up to $50 million can be raised in a Tier 2 offering under the new, updated and expanded Regulation A, known as Reg A+ within a one year period. As adopted, only businesses organized in and have principal place of business in the United States or Canada would be qualified to use Reg A+
1 Comment - I think the innovation of crowd funding platforms is a cool use of social media technologies for investors, but I wonder what some of the downside issues will be once more of these platforms launch
The research firm predicts that a single corporate risk event will lead to losses topping $20 billion this year."
1 Comment - Today I watched a presentation by Boardwalktech and MetricStream (GRC software provider) that had startling claims about the lack of critical spreadsheet governance
According to CNBC, banks could be using bitcoin by the end of next year based on the development with the adoption of new cloud-based ledger technology called “blockchain”. According to a report by TABB research -- “Capital markets could adopt the technology behind bitcoin as early as next year, revolutionizing the industry by enabling more secure transactions and creating new streams of revenue. According to a recent article in the Economist , “the NASDAQ exchange will soon start using a blockchain-based system to record trades in privately held companies
“Don’t think of blockchain as bitcoin—it’s much, much more than that
During his speech he called about the XBRL Community to work to link XBRL data to the global LEI standard so we can link specific financial data of companies to a specific legal entity identifier
2 Comments - Linking financial information in XBRL format to a legal entity identifier will provide even more value to structured, digital disclosure