Both SWIFT and XBRL US, the non-profit consortium for XBRL business reporting standards, have partnered with Citi on a pilot program designed to demonstrate the costs and benefits of using XBRL in corporate actions announcements for Depositary Receipts (DRs).

Citi's Securities and Fund Services business has developed technology that will allow it to deliver Corporate Actions announcements in an automated and standard format for retrieval by XBRL pilot program participants.

The XBRL taxonomy for corporate actions reporting is based on elements of the ISO 20022 corporate actions global standard and is vastly more streamlined than current reporting and announcement processes. The initial pilot with Citi focused on preliminary and final dividend announcements for Citi's DR programs and was initiated in late 2010. Work has now begun on phase two of the XBRL project focused on reporting non-dividend corporate actions.

According to Alan Smith, Managing Director and Head of Issuer Services at Citi, "Our industry has long been seeking a standardized solution to the challenge of corporate actions notification and automated processing. Citi, as an industry leader, has been focused on the application of emerging technology tools and was quick to recognize the great potential to be unlocked by enabling investors to access corporate actions information through the utility of XBRL. Much work remains to be done however in engaging more participants and establishing an industry-wide governance model for these early efforts."