NCUA Sticks with XML as Banking Regulators Go XBRL

WASHINGTON – NCUA has found that its own customized XML-based software is most suitable for credit union call reports despite the other federal banking regulators’ moves to XBRL. XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, was created specifically for the reporting of business and financial data, according to XBRL International, a nonprofit group of about 450 companies and agencies worldwide building and promoting the XBRL language. XBRL International touted the language for its flexibility, accuracy and efficiency. The banking regulators began using XBRL in October. However, NCUA is not currently using this Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based software application, opting instead for its own software customized for the agency and credit unions. “NCUA differs from the other financial regulators in that we provide the credit unions with software to generate their call report files,” NCUA Public Affairs Specialist Cherie Umbel explained. “This software, which is modified each quarter to meet our changing data collection needs, contains a large number of edits and warnings to prevent the creation of bad data. This reduces somewhat the potential value of XBRL to NCUA.” Because NCUA uses its own software, NCUA is also able to generate Financial Performance Reports immediately upon transmission of the call report filing. However, Umbel said if the agency re-evaluates and sees a need for using XBRL, it would consider doing so. Instead of treating financial data as a block of text-as the standard Web page does-according to XBRL International, it provides an identifying tag for each individual data item such as “net profit.”