Italian Bank, Banca Monte Paschi dei Siena, has taken the first step towards making XBRL a routine tool to support the exchange of information between companies and investors, by tagging their most recent GRI sustainability report using the GRI G3 XBRL taxonomy.

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language and was originally developed for transmitting financial information.

XBRL offers a way to put an electronic “tag” on numbers or other qualitative information in the report. That way, computers can recognize the information, select it, analyze it, store it, exchange it with other computers and present it automatically in different ways. XBRL can be applied with the use of inexpensive desktop software.

GRI is planning to work with investors and companies to identify how to further improve upon the GRI G3 XBRL taxonomy that was created in 2006. The output of this initiative will be a second version of the taxonomy that can potentially reduce the time needed to respond to many of the basic information needs of investors.

The main benefits of using the XBRL include:

·         Greater reliability and consistency of information;

·         Faster data collection, aggregation, sorting analysis for in-house purposes;

·         Enhanced ability to customize reporting to meet the specific needs of information seekers such as investors and analysts; and

·         Compatibility with financial reporting systems and requirements (e.g. SEC, IFRS, Basel II).

To find out more about XBRL and the GRI project, click here.

If your company is interested in getting involved in this project, please email Sean Gilbert.

For those interested in the webinar about XBRL mentioned in the last newsletter, this has been delayed until early next year. You will be contacted directly with details for the webinar.

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