SEC seeks interactive financial data from top US companies

Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Commission wants some of the top listed companies in the US to start making financial disclosures through an interactive data system by early next year.

The SEC board today voted unanimously to formally propose using a new technology to get important information to investors faster, more reliably, and at a lower cost.

Under the proposal, adopted 3-0 by the SEC, most of the remaining listed companies would be required to begin using the so-called XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, in their regulatory filings in 2010 and 2011.

The use of data-tagging with XBRL language will replace the agency's Edgar online reporting system, in place since the 1980s, which stores paper regulatory filings in electronic form.

''At the center of the SEC proposal is the `interactive data' - computer `tags' similar in function to bar codes used to identify groceries and shipped packages. The interactive data tags uniquely identify individual items in a company's financial statement so they can be easily searched on the internet, downloaded into spreadsheets, reorganised in databases, and put to any number of other comparative and analytical uses by investors, analysts, and journalists,'' SEC said in a release.

"This is all about bringing investors better, faster, more meaningful information about the companies they own," said SEC chairman Christopher Cox. "It would transform financial disclosure from a 1930s form-based system to a truly 21st century model that taps the power of technology for the benefit of investors," he added.