Data-quality corner: spotlighting SEC comment letters
As our regular readers will know, we’ve been exploring some of the filing issues that crop up in comment letters to individual companies from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Collectively, these provide an interesting picture of tagging errors affecting data quality – and it turns out that one of the commonest is simply not tagging all or part of reported data.
To take just one example of a letter emphasising the requirement to file in Inline XBRL, the SEC wrote to SmartMetric, Inc. in January 2022. “We remind you that non-accelerated filers and smaller reporting companies are required to present inline XBRL data for the first Form 10-Q for a fiscal period ending on or after the June 15, 2021 compliance date,” it states, instructing the company to submit Inline XBRL information in future filings.
While the SEC’s digital reporting programme is extremely well established, and has become a matter of routine for most companies, this is a useful reminder of the need for regulators to invest in ongoing outreach and education for filers – particularly smaller and newer companies. As the SEC continues to expand its range of digital reporting requirements, it will be important to ensure that filers are aware of all the rules that apply to them – and so make sure that the data reaches the hands of analysts.
Read the SEC comment letter here, or investigate all past letters and related filings using the EDGAR search tool and selecting ‘Filing review correspondence’ under ‘Filing category’ in ‘more search options.’ And catch up on the rest of this series here, here, and here.
