XBRL

Question 1

What is XBRL?

Answer 1

• This is a computer language designed to communicate financial data to users.
• A taxonomy (classification system) is used to support XBRL.

Question 2

XBRL was introduced to provide a more efficient method of dealing with financial data.

What was inefficient about the previous methods?

Answer 2

• Prior to the introduction of XBRL, financial data was transferred using far more ineffective file types like HTML and PDF.
• This would force regulators to manually input the data into the systems. XBRL is much more more efficient and prevents this. This is because computers can notice the tags within an XBRL file and automatically process it.