Bank of England PofC Study on XBRL Analytics

The Bank of England recently conducted a Proof of Concept study on XBRL for analytical purposes. The methodology involved a analytics software provider and addressed questions whether the software tool, NTT DATA & Reportix, was able to deliver on key criteria for determining t he usefulness of the data for analytical purposes using their tool.

BofE has made a large commitment to XBRL, as have other European banks and regulators, so this test was very important. XBRL is used in over 75 countries and in the uK it is estimated that 70 - 80% of the regulatory data comes in XBRL format. While XBRL has been used for analytical purposes for some time, the BofE study was important because of it rigour, comprehensiveness and the quality of its findings.

All key success criteria were met with in the study. They included:

• Success Criterion 1: Demonstrate the potential for the solution to reduce the effort associated to change by at least two thirds.
• Success Criterion 2: Demonstrate the potential for such a solution to leverage investments being made by the Bank in its data architecture.
• Success Criterion 3: Demonstrate end-users can access the data as they would normally, but now have the potential to interact it with it in different ways with different tools. 

XBRL is already the defacto standard for reporting regulatory data in digital form. The analytical tools are developing quickly, but there is work still to be done. The BofE study is summarized on their website.