The SEC is replacing its decades-old EDGAR system for collecting and distributing financial data with an entirely new IDEA (Interactive Data Electronic Applications) system that takes advantage of 21st century internet technologies and will change the way investors get and use business information. So why is EDGAR Online excited about the SEC’s giving away free XBRL data?
The SEC announced its IDEA in a recent webcast during which Chairman Christopher Cox demonstrated the system’s speed and user-friendly tools. “People should have the same easy tools for comparing financial data”, said Cox, “as they have for comparing cars or airline tickets or vacation packages”.
IDEA is expected to be fully operational within three years. As it is being built, it will function in tandem with EDGAR. Users will seamlessly transition to the new system as the old system is eventually relegated to an archive database. IDEA will offer enhanced XBRL-formatted data that which software applications can automatically search, download, and crunch-without the need of a third party data provider.
What a minute! Isn’t EDGAR Online a third party data provider? So why we are as excited about this IDEA as the SEC is?
Yes, IDEA delivers XBRL data for free, but SEC data has always been free – EDGAR Online has used it to become the world’s premier online source of value-added business information. The SEC’s commitment to XBRL simply increases our ability to offer even more valuable information, while increasing the value of I•Metrix, which is already one of the best selling XBRL analysis tools in the world and which can help people make sense of the data coming into IDEA.
We’ve been backing XBRL for years:
- EDGAR Online has already translated (tagged) over 10 years of SEC’s data, created the largest historical database in the world of XBRL data on US companies. That means we can provide context that no one else can for the XBRL data that will be coming directly from companies reporting into the IDEA database starting next year.
- We have components that can make it easy for web sites and applications to display this data.
- We have expertise to help investors compare the 12,000 XBRL elements in IDEA to the 3,500 elements in China’s version of IDEA and 2,500 elements in the Korean version of IDEA and the Indian, Japanese XBRL repositories.
- We have the ability to create private repositories of XBRL data – -and help the financial community analyze their own XBRL data vs the XBRL data that will be in the IDEA system.
- Last but not least we have automated software that makes it easy and low cost for companies to create the XBRL-formatted filings that they will be required to submit to IDEA. EDGAR Online understands the EDGAR system and the IDEA system possibly better than any other company.
Simply said we add value across the entire XBRL food chain. We have been waiting for the day that XBRL is a required data format.
For those who don’t like new ideas, the SEC has no technical specification or regulatory mandate on the horizon that makes XBRL the only filing format. This means companies will be filing documents with EDGAR for many years-and investors will need access to these historical documents for many, many, many years.
In addition, there are nearly 200 form types that are filed as EDGAR documents. The SEC has only required supplemental XBRL data for 3 of these 200 or so forms (10-K, 10-Q, and the Mutual Fund Risk Return Statement). We expect the need for EDGAR documents and IDEA data will coexist for more than a decade as all these forms and the associated regulations and industry players need to be converted to IDEA’s data specifications.
The full webcast of the SEC’s presentation of IDEA can be seen at the SEC’s Web site.
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