Citi announced collaboration with XBRL US Labs

On Monday, September 16, XBRL US announced that Citibank is working with XBRL US Labs, the research and development arm of XBRL US, to research the costs and benefits of transforming corporate actions processing in a pilot program that will involve dividend payment announcements.  An impact analysis will be conducted on the issuance of XBRL-tagged announcements, processing by banks, depositaries, and stock exchanges, and on the ultimate usability of corporate event data by information consumers, particularly shareholders.

“Citi is pleased to participate in this XBRL corporate actions pilot,” said Alan Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Citi Securities and Fund Services.  “As a market leader and early adopter, we will look forward to welcoming other institutions to help standardize financial information and achieve true straight-through-processing and benefit our customers, the recipients of these event announcements.”

Experts in corporate actions services at Citi will work with XBRL US Labs and other pilot participants as part of an initiative launched in 2009 by XBRL US, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and SWIFT to use XBRL to reduce corporate actions' cost and time, and to improve data quality.  The initiative published a business case in May of this year, (http://xbrl.us/i2i/pages/businesscase.aspx) and has developed an XBRL taxonomy based on the ISO 20022 standard, which is scheduled for an early October release on the XBRL US website for public review, testing, and comment, (www.xbrl.us).The pilot is designed to test the premise that the use of structured, computer-readable data can streamline the process and introduce straight-through-processing (STP). 

"Citi's collaboration in this pilot will help to demonstrate how a large amount of information can be more easily, accurately and efficiently consumed, saving money and time and ultimately getting critical information to investors", said David Hands, Director, Product Development, DTCC. "We look forward to following this ADR-based pilot with another program focusing on US-based issuers early in 2011."

Initial efforts will focus on tests on dividend announcements issued by American Depositary Receipts (ADRs).  ADRs are US securities based on foreign shares that are received and processed by depositary banks such as Citi.  Announcements about ADRs are transmitted from Citi to stock exchanges, investors, depositories such as the DTCC, and other intermediaries.  The ADR dividend announcement process was selected by Citi and XBRL US Labs as a good test for XBRL because corporate actions announcements from ADRs are concentrated among a relatively small number of depositary banks, and rely on significant hard copy transmittals and re-keying. The pilot will use the XBRL ISO 20022 taxonomy, or dictionary, to create XBRL-formatted documents that will be used directly by downstream users.