Med XBRL bliver livet lettere for investorer.

Formanden for SEC i USA, Christoffer Cox, har beskrevet det således i en tale den 8. oktober 2007:

"So let's imagine a better world, in which information the SEC helps you get as an investor is actually useful to you. Imagine that instead of clunky one-size-fits-all documents and impenetrable financial statements, you can get the financial ratios and industry comparisons you’re most interested in – sent straight to your desktop in real-time through an RSS feed. Imagine Internet bots and Google gadgets that put up real-time news alerts on your desktop whenever there's an SEC filing about a company or mutual fund you're following. Imagine that you could compare financial ratios across entire industries at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse. And imagine that if you opened up your Excel spreadsheet, a company's entire set of financial statements would instantly pop into the correct cells, with neatly labeled rows and columns awaiting your next command.

Well, all of this is much closer to reality than you might think. Thanks to a worldwide private sector initiative based on the familiar XML language, something called eXtensible Business Reporting Language is being used to accomplish these very things. Because XBRL is such a close cousin to XML, it can do all the things that XML can do. By providing data tags for every essential element of a financial statement or annual report, XBRL can move us from the world of paper-based forms to a new age of truly interactive disclosure, in which the investor is in charge."

Se talen www.sec.gov/news/speech/2007/spch100807cc.wmv eller www.sec.gov/news/speech/2007/spch100807cc.mov

Læs hele talen på http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2007/spch100807cc.htm