Entity Specific Disclosures Task Force Gains Momentum

The Entity Specific Disclosures Task Force has begun its work, led by co-chairs Louis Matherne (FASB) and Andromeda Wood (IASB). Over 20 participants joined the most recent call, kicking off the discovery phase of the project, where the task force is hearing about updates from various implementations around the world on the different ways they have tackled these types of disclosures. The task force will hear about experiences in the US, the UK and Denmark to start, with a number of other countries, including Japan and Chile to follow.

If you have not seen some of our earlier updates on this effort, an Entity Specific Disclosure, in the context of XBRL, is one made by an organisation in the course of their reporting to markets, regulators or stakeholders that conveys information that is not covered in the relevant public taxonomy. Such disclosures can be addressed using extension taxonomies, although other mechanism are also possible. The use of extensions allows filers to accurately represent their disclosure in XBRL, but can also make it harder to perform analysis and comparison on the resulting data.

The goal of the task force is to improve the handling of entity specific disclosures, including defining when best to use extensions and to improve the comparability of extensions and the filings that use them. Following the discovery phase the ESDTF will define requirements for technical mechanisms for improving comparability and develop suggestions for best practices and potentially new specification modules to constrain the way that ESDs are made.