Modernizing Financial Data Collection with XBRL

In 2003, three U.S. banking regulatory agencies combined resources to revolutionize the collection, editing, storage, and dissemination of Commercial Bank Reports of Income and Condition. The regulatory agencies relied heavily on web-based technology and the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) transmission protocol. This paper will review the creation of an interagency data collection and dissemination facility. It will focus on the business problem that needed to be solved, the evolution of the technology that enabled the project, what XBRL is, and why was it selected as the transmission protocol. The paper will also review the challenges and benefits associated with using a standard transmission protocol versus creating a customized XML transmission facility. Introduction In 2003, U. S. bank regulators, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRS), and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) combined resources to revolutionize the collection, editing, storage, and dissemination of the Commercial Bank Report of Income and Condition (Call Report). The system development process took approximately two years and was completed in March 2005. The new process utilizes internet technology and XBRL protocols. The benefits of the new process include easier distribution of reporting requirements, fewer revisions to reported data, and easier dissemination of data to the market. The Call Report is a regulator-specified report which collects primarily financial statement data. This means that the data collected are standardized across the industry and predefined by the banking regulators. The financial data conform to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. However, the data are not synonymous with data that are collected from other market regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Many of the data variables collected are comparable to those collected by other regulators or published in the financial statements, but additional variables are uniquely defined for and used specifically by the banking regulators. The Call Report is filed by all U.S. insured commercial banks and state chartered savings banks, which currently includes over 7,700 institutions. Each bank is required to file a quarterly report, which contains over 2,000 variables, to its regulator. Although all banks must file a Call Report not all banks are required to file the exact same set of data. For example, banks with foreign operations are required to provide details about their foreign activities that are not applicable to banks that operate solely in the domestic realm. The criteria for which variables a bank must report are detailed in the instructions. Historical Data Collection Model The collection of Call Report data has evolved over the years from a manual collection process to the current internet submission process. Figure 1 shows the regulators’ data collection, editing, and distribution model in use before the 2003 Call Report Modernization project. The historical model required all banks to file their Call Report electronically but involved multiple regulators maintaining multiple copies of the Call Report data and, individually contacting banks regarding any questions or modifications to that data. The historical model included the following data flows: 1. Reporting form changes are communicated to banks and software vendors via PDF and Word files. 2. Each regulator and bank modifies its internal applications to receive or send data. 3. Banks compile the required data and send a standardized formatted file to a central collection vendor. 4. The collection vendor compiles the banks’ filings and transmits the data to the Federal Reserve System (FRS). 5. The Federal Reserve parses the data and transmits the data to the FDIC. 6. Each banking regulator (FRS, FDIC, OCC) maintains its own copy of the most current data.