ESEF reporting
Risk avoidance and financial transparency have been scaled up by authorities in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. First came Basel III prescriptions and the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD IV) which have seen financial institutions produce XBRL-tagged regulatory statements. Now, Solvency II XBRL reports are demanded from insurance companies, as IORP II will be from pension funds and Liability Data Reports (LDR) from banks both as of 2019.
Next on the list is the requirement of the amended European Transparency Directive that issuers listed on regulated markets in the EU prepare their annual financial reports in a European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) as per 1 January 2020. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published the final regulatory technical standards (RTS) on the ESEF, and the legal endorsement process is currently ongoing and is in the hands of the European Commission, Parliament and Council. The publication in the Official Journal is expected by Q2 2019.
In plain English, it boils down to one thing, that basically all companies whose shares are traded on stock markets have got a new clock ticking with yet another deadline for their auditors and IT-people: ESEF.
The target structured electronic reporting will be using ‘inline XBRL’, or iXBRL, which is a compound of (A) the now-well-known XBRL tagging language that makes the labelled disclosures structured and machine-readable, and (B) XHTML, a spinoff of the hypertext markup language (HTML) used for creating Web pages that is based on the HTML 4.0 syntax, but has been modified to follow the guidelines of XML, the Extensible Markup Language. It amounts to say that a report edited in iXBRL, such as ESEF, will inherit from properties of both ‘parents’: machine-readability and browser-like rendering. More over iXBRL in regulatory reports can be found here.
Shaping ESEF reports is a real project, at the crossroad of business, accounting, legal and ICT domains. Depending on your organisation, business rules and constraints, ESEF can become a complex project for which anticipation and caution are vital. But it may also be a huge opportunity for your teams to work out how to improve data governance and information flows within the firm, and subsidiaries if any.
We can seriously help you out! Acting as a “service provider”.
Arevio ESEF edition is ready
Solution
The cornerstone of your solution is named AREVIO, our home-made, taxonomy-driven, XBRL wizard.
In a few words, AREVIO comes with a bundle of powerful (and user-friendly!) features:
- Support of XBRL specifications: table, presentation, formula, dimensions linkbases and inline XBRL
- Native XBRL drafting capability for any taxonomies based on Presentation or Table Linkbase
- Spreadsheet drafting support (MS-Excel or OpenOffice Calc) for any taxonomy based on Presentation or Table Linkbase
- iXBRL support for Presentation Linkbase taxonomies
- Strong formula processor providing validation results in user interface, XML file or spreadsheet contextual format
- Optional deactivation of temporarily inadequate validation rules
- Advanced drafting capabilities in terms of search, footnote management, or viewing facts either raw or rendered, and showing them in all their table locations.
Oh by the way, when we say AREVIO is “taxonomy-driven”, it means that the engine is capable of digesting any taxonomy requested by regulating bodies and authorities: once you invest in AREVIO, you’re in for all taxonomies you may need, not only ESEF. Since XBRL filings are getting more popular by the day, it’s a nice way to recoup your investment…
Project
Acsone’s engineers have a long and extensive experience in the production of structured documents with the XBRL and XML formats. We have accumulated a tremendous expertise gained in critical contexts such as the implementation of the whole budgetary process of the EU (Council, Parliament, Commission), and likewise for the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, as well as the specification and implementation of the whole validation process for the Official Journal by the Publications Office of the EU. And from there we have distilled an agile methodology tailored to the specific needs of an editorial project.
Therefore, we can offer you assistance in any of the aspects of the ESEF project you shall set up, in view of:
- Gathering requirements and analysing them
- Identifying existing IT systems in connection with reported data – with an eye on their traceability
- Harmonising data granularity, units, dimensions, groupings across all reporting entities within your company
- Helping your auditors and IT personnel sort out the IFRS-extended taxonomy finally published by the ESMA
- Prototyping sensitive aspects of the solution (we can also suggest innovations in line with your digital transformation approach)
- Iteratively implementing with regular delivery of effective features
- Developing custom plug-ins
- Creating an XHTML gallery of templates to design and to dress up your annual report
- Testing in depth, so as to streamline your trial-and-error process when submitting XBRL filings and save precious time
- Configuration management
- Coaching, training and doing change management so as to favour a safe user adoption
- Deployment & roll-out
- Support and maintenance
- Completion of ongoing production.
Acsone’s engineers are dedicated professionals trained to work in team within or without the Client’s site, and to integrate smoothly with the Client’s team while adhering to their culture and idiosyncrasies. Discretion, no intrusion… Quality of performance is in our DNA. Stakes are high, we deliver.