Adopting XBRL in the Financial Statements Data Pool of Deutsche Bundesbank Dominik Elgg Deutsche Bundesbank Statistics Department

Contents  I. The Financial Statements Data Pool  1. The project  2. Benefits from pool  3. Considered data and benchmark statistics  4. Participation and status  II. XBRL as data format  1. Information chain  2. Issues and problems - Solution through XBRL  3. Special requirements and examples  4. Status and outlook  III. Advantages and challenges from a technical and programming perspective.

I.Financial Statements Data Pool The project  Joint project of Bundesbank and German financial institutes  Idea: Pool of financial statements which is filled by several contributors  Project rests upon the principles:  Voluntary participation  Reciprocity  Data protection (anonymous data)  Low costs for participants.

Benefits from pool  Participants: extensive benchmark statistics (ratios)  Advantage of enlarged dataset  Bundesbank: continuation and extension of corporate financial statements statistics  Dataset is basis for micro- and macroeconomic analyses  Providing information (statistics) to the public  Compensation for reduction of Bundesbank‘s own dataset.

Considered data  Financial statements of German companies:  Only individual accounts (no consolidated accounts so far)  Basically data on income statement and balance sheet  Non-financial companies  Only based on German Commercial Code.

Benchmark statistics (financial ratios and differentiation)  More than 180 ratios  Preparation by sector, size, legal form, region and year  Differentiation as far as data protection allows  Quartiles as statistical parameters  Quarterly update of the statistic  Calculation of ratios for nearly groups per year.

Example

Participation  Banks  Credit insurers  Datev  Other institutes with considerable datasets  Bundesbank  Current participation: 9.

Current status  Database started 4th quarter 2003  financial statements per year (gross)  Deduction of duplicates  Deduction of deficient data  More than financial statements per year (net)  Shipment of 4 benchmark statistics so far.

II. XBRL as data format  Two different possibilities for sending data to Bundesbank:  XBRL  Alternative: plain text format.

Information chain POOL Financial statement BundesbankPartner Banks Credit insurers etc. Financial statements of German non-financial companies Statistics Database Ratios Cash Flow Profitability Leverage by legal form... by sector... by size... by region... by year XBRL

Issues and problems  Participating institutes have different recording systems  Partners have different guidelines for keying data into the recording system  Bias in the data  Problems in the identification process of duplicates.

Why XBRL?  Standardised, non-proprietary format for exchanging financial statements data  Data which comes directly from companies is qualitatively better than data that is manually keyed in into the recording system  In the long-term XBRL might lead to the same data scheme and guidelines, as a basis for analysing financial statements.  Scheme of pool dataset (relational database) is based on German taxonomy.

The issue of data quality - examples  Several data sources with different data quality  Strict quality checks  About 10% loss of data in historic data due to big errors, maximum of 5% in actual data  Thousands of minor errors  With the XBRL test data we received so far: 0 errors.

Specific requirements on data format  Anonymous data (data protection)  Separation of characteristics (e.g. legal form) from accounting entries (data protection)  Add-on items not represented in taxonomy  Creation of an extended XML/XBRL framework while keeping the advantages of XBRL.

<xbrl xmlns=" xmlns:xsi=" xmlns:t=" xsi:schemaLocation=" german_ap.xsd"> ABC S.A ISO4217:EUR Example XBRL Instance Document

<xbrl xmlns=" xmlns:xsi=" xmlns:t=" xsi:schemaLocation=" german_ap.xsd"> ABC AG ISO4217:EUR Accounting entries

<xbrl xmlns=" xmlns:xsi=" xmlns:t=" xsi:schemaLocation=" german_ap.xsd"> ABC AG ISO4217:EUR Context

- h e g DEM - 3,1/ ISO4217:DEM Extended XML/XBRL framework (accounting entries)

Status of XBRL project in data pool  Implementation completed  Successful tests with test data and authentic data  As the first partner, Datev will send XBRL data from this quarter on.

III. Advantages and challenges Pros and Cons from a programming perspective:  Possible validation on sender side  Flexibility of XML  Lower effort of programming  Minor error rate  XBRL as non-proprietary format  Current ‘Hybrid‘ format  Some familiarisation with XBRL/XML  Dependency on external XBRL-specification  File size.

Advantages from an accounting perspective  Structured data instead of paper or PDF’s  Non-proprietary standard  Separation of content from presentation  Flexibility: taxonomies can be created individually  Independent of information type (e.g. accounting standard)  XML as basis is rather easy to understand  Knowledge transfer: taxonomies can be created together (e.g working groups filled by auditors, data receivers, software companies).

Challenges from an accounting perspective  Dependency on an independent organisation (e.g. enduring specification)  [Dependency on software (companies)]  Sender has to be convinced of using XBRL.

Outlook  Integration of IFRS financial statements:  Relevant for individual accounts from 2005 on (2006).  Potential integration of consolidated accounts  Use of IFRS (and SME-IFRS) taxonomy  Use of results of III WG on IFRS impact and CBSO databases (group of Manuel Ortega - Banco de España)  Use of potential extensions of German jurisdiction.

Vision for the next 5 to 10 years  XBRL is used by all participants: sending and receiving  to financial statements of German companies based on SME-IFRS that can be compared to their European counterpart.

??? Questions & Answers !!!

Contact information Dominik Elgg DEUTSCHE BUNDESBANK Financial Statements Data Pool Statistics Department Tel

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