SEC Announces Program to Facilitate Analysis of Corporate Financial Data
The SEC announced the launch of a pilot program to facilitate investor analysis and comparisons of public company financial statement data.
The new program will combine and structure data provided by companies into formats that can be downloaded in bulk from the SEC's website. According to the SEC, the data sets will contain financial statement data from eXtensible Business Reporting Language ("XBRL") exhibits as filed with the SEC. In 2015, the data sets will be expanded to include data in footnotes to the financial statements.
The pilot program builds on the SEC's efforts to utilize structured data in corporate reports, including a staff assessment of custom tag rates in XBRL exhibits issued in July. SEC staff also sent letters earlier this year to certain companies regarding required calculations in their XBRL exhibits.