Implementation tips from the Banco de España
Maite Sainz from Banco de España recently provided an update on the XBRL implementation at that regulator. The Bank of Spain is that country’s central bank and bank regulator (national-level regulators are known as NCAs or National Competent Authorities in Europe), and has been using XBRL for data collection since 2005.
The Bank has been extremely influential in the design of the European taxonomies. It has also expended very significant efforts in the collaborative development of many of XBRL’s key specifications within the XBRL International consortium.
The Bank now has a set of tightly integrated systems that use consistent metadata across their data collections.
Sainz emphasised the importance of well developed communications plans with all members of the impacted community when making changes to a data collection environment, including regulated entities, software providers and consultants, as well as the supervisors within the collecting agency. She also encourages people working in this field not to spare any effort in the development of taxonomies: high quality taxonomies lead to high quality data. Finally, she points out that it is the business users that must lead the construction of a unified financial vocabulary.
