FCA opens up NSM data with viewer and new download formats
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has made a small change with a big impact in a recent upgrade of the National Storage Mechanism (NSM) – the official repository for regulated disclosures from listed companies. The update makes the structured data in tagged Annual Financial Reports much easier to use.
Newly submitted tagged reports can now be opened directly in an iXBRL viewer, allowing anyone to interact with the underlying structured data rather than just reading the document. Download options have also been expanded beyond the original filing format to include xBRL-JSON and xBRL-CSV, making it easier to drop data straight into analysis tools and spreadsheets. The FCA is also now processing historical filings to make them available in the same way, and the NSM user guide has been updated to match.
The FRC Lab’s own research into structured digital reporting found that 77% of XBRL data users retrieved data from company websites rather than from repositories such as the NSM; a sign that something was getting in the way.
Upgraded viewers like this one, that offer analysis-friendly formats at the click of a button, put machine-readable data within reach of investors, analysts and researchers without specialist tools. We’d love to see every regulator with an XBRL mandate taking notes.
Read more here.
