As the biggest U.S. corporations begin using XBRL this month tofile reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), atrio of financial services industry organizations is already tryingto build on that requirement to promote the use of XBRL for theannouncements of corporate actions.

The Depository Trust Clearing Corp. (DTCC), SWIFT and XBRL U.S.said last month that they are joining forces to create an XBRLtaxonomy for corporate actions, such as mergers, stock splits anddividend payments. In addition, DTCC will develop a system thatcreates a unique identifier for each corporate actionannouncement.

Extending the use of XBRL to tag corporate actions would allowfinancial services firms to boost their efficiency and eliminatemanual errors by using more straight-through processing (STP) intheir communications because the XBRL tags can be automaticallytranslated into SWIFT's ISO messaging standard.

The trio may have some persuading to do with corporates,however, judging by the reception the initiative received when itwas announced recently at a conference in New York. Jeff Morgan,CEO of the National Investor Relations Institute, said XBRL taggingof corporate actions announcements was “not on issuers' radarscreens,” adding that companies may not feel they have an incentiveto standardize the release of corporate actions.

Mark Bolgiano, the CEO of XBRL US, said that since companieswill be using XBRL to tag their SEC reports, the cost of extendingits use to corporate actions is likely to be limited. “They're notmoving to some special corporate actions XBRL production system,”Bolgiano said.

Errors made while manually converting corporate actionsinformation into electronic format annually cost financial servicesfirms from $400 million to $900 million a year, according to U.K.consulting firm Oxera.

However, a company's responsibility ends once it releases itsannouncement and makes any required filings. “The issuer isobviously concerned if there is an error in the redistribution ofthat information, but the fact is, any redistribution is not theissuer's responsibility,” Morgan said, adding that company pressreleases are not regulated so companies won't be required to putthem in XBRL.

The SEC likely would support such a move, though “the commissionis not at this time proposing rules around tagging of corporateactions,” David Blaszkowsky, director of the SEC's Office ofInteractive Disclosure, said at the same conference. “We hoped andexpected that the implementation of XBRL for certain kinds of SECreporting, such as for GAAP, functions as the infrastructure andwould set the conditions for other private sector development andadoption of XBRL, such as corporate actions,” he said, adding thatcorporate actions reporting “is an ideal domain” for XBRL.