Citi Publishes First Ever XBRL Dividend Message Over DTCC

Posted on April 22, 2013 by admin

Citi, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and XBRL US today announced that Citi has begun sending XBRL-formatted dividend announcements related to ADRs for which it is the depositary bank to DTCC through The Depository Trust Company (DTC), a DTCC subsidiary. These announcements are used to update the DTCC database, consolidate corresponding information and distribute dividend information to DTCC users. The use of XBRL for dividend announcements reduces the need for manual entry, thereby creating efficiency, reducing risk and enabling straight-through-processing. This pilot program was developed to demonstrate the power of XBRL for corporate actions processing and is currently in place for American Depositary Receipts (ADRs).

Corporate actions, events that occur in the life of a public company, range from dividend announcements to complex mergers to stock splits, and typically require action on the part of an investor. Corporate actions announcements are delivered to shareholders through SEC filings and news releases through numerous intermediaries. Industry wide, many segments of today’s process are manual and redundant, resulting in a lack of timeliness, the possibility of errors and substantial costs.

“This is a significant milestone in demonstrating how corporate actions processing can benefit from a technology innovation like structured data,” said Alan Smith, Managing Director, Citi Securities and Fund Services (SFS), “We’re pleased that Citi has taken a key role in an initiative that ultimately will result in better, faster and much less expensive data for the marketplace.”

Since October, Citi has also been distributing the XBRL-formatted dividend announcements via secure FTP to GlobeTax, also a member of the ADR pilot and Citi’s appointed agent for tax relief and reclaim services for the ADRs it issues. The next step in the pilot program is to expand the program into other types of corporate actions announcements and into announcements by US-based public company issuers.

“DTCC receives thousands of announcements from issuers and intermediaries every day,” said Dan Thieke, DTCC Managing Director, Asset Services, “XBRL enables us to take that information directly into our systems without manual intervention, thereby reducing risk and cost and boosting efficiency and accuracy.”

To review the XBRL Corporate Actions Taxonomy, go to http://xbrl.us/taxonomies/Pages/2012corpactions.aspx

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