UBmatrix, the leading provider of XBRL information exchange solutions, announced today that its partner in France, Umanis, has completed the initial implementation of a UBmatrix XBRL-based Reporting Solution for the Banque de France, the French Central Bank.
The Banque de France is responsible for regulating all banking and investment firms in France. All 630+ institutions that report to Banque de France will begin doing so in XBRL on October 31st, 2007.
"The Banque de France is one the first European Central Banks to have completed the establishment of a reporting system driven by the new reporting requirement under Basel II," said Steve Berdah, Umanis XBRL BU Technical Director and Banque de France COFINREP Project Manager. "We are pleased with the speed and efficiency with which we were able to implement the new reporting system based on UBmatrix XBRL, particularly given the complexity of the task. The performance of this application allows the validation of even an exceptional data load, corresponding to 100+ FINREP XBRL Reports and 200+ COREP Reports per day. The Banque de France now has one of the most advanced XBRL-based reporting solutions in the world."
Under Basel II, French banks will now be reporting twice annually an average of 12,000 data elements in XBRL to their national central bank, as compared to just 900 data elements under the previous Basel I, following the recommendation of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS).
CEBS, which gives advice to the European Commission on banking policy issues and promotes cooperation across the European Union, has recommended the use of XBRL as the Financial and Prudential reporting standard for all European Banks.
In less than nine months, the Banque de France, Umanis and UBmatrix have successfully developed both a set of taxonomies and business rules for bank reporting - and developed an XBRL reporting portal to which banks will electronically report their Common Reporting (CoRep) and Financial Reporting (FinRep). The first phase of the program was to develop taxonomies and business rules using the UBmatrix XBRL Taxonomy Designer. In total, more than 250 electronic business rules were created, which will allow the Banque de France to ensure the accuracy and consistency of bank reporting.
With this implementation, the Banque de France becomes the first European Central Bank to complete the implementation of a new reporting system to meet the requirements of COREP (Basel II) and FINREP reporting for all French banks.
Banque de France released the XBRL reporting taxonomies in January 2007. The XBRL reporting portal was launched in March 2007 and is available for banks to begin pilot reporting with their electronic signature. French banks will be required to submit in the new XBRL taxonomy to the new reporting system beginning on October 31st, 2007.
Umanis has also developed, for the submitting banks, an XBRL integrated solution (FINRISK) that allows them to efficiently and accurately comply with the COREP and FINREP reporting XBRL requirements. FINRISK includes a function of integrated electronic signature. Umanis' FINRISK solution is based on the new UBmatrix Report Builder and UBmatrix xBreeze Web-based services, creating a seamless solution that allows submitting banks to ensure their reports are 100% accurate, 100% compliant and error free.
"Basel II and other regulatory developments and agencies are rapidly driving a trend toward XBRL adoption - and making XBRL the standard for financial information reporting and exchange," said Sunir Kapoor, president and chief executive officer of UBmatrix, Inc. "As the leader in the XBRL market, UBmatrix is uniquely positioned to help organizations develop the XBRL solutions they will need to stay competitive and compliant."
UBmatrix develops and provides XBRL-based information exchange solutions to leading global organizations and enterprises allowing them to more efficiently and effectively address the challenges of business and financial information management and reporting. As recently noted in a Harvard Business Review, "XBRL will make it much easier to generate, validate, aggregate, and analyze business and financial information, which in turn will improve the quality, timeliness, completeness, and comparability of the information that companies use to make decisions."