Bloomberg Puts BSE XBRL Data on Terminal

Bloomberg has added company financial data from corporations listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format to its Bloomberg Professional terminal, to make it easier for subscribers to compare fundamental data on Indian companies. 

The exchange is the first in India to adopt the XBRL taxonomy published by the country’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs for the filing of company financial statements. Since February 18, the BSE has received more than 21,000 XBRL documents. 

XBRL is an electronic format for the communication of business and financial data that facilitates better automation, cost control, and more reliable data handling. It is used among financial regulators, stock exchanges, business registrars and listed companies. The standard facilitates easier extraction of data than PDFs, which still require manual input. Financial statements produced in the XBRL format allow for extraction of data such as shareholding patterns, financial results, annual reports, voting results, corporate governance details, as well as financial results specific to general and life insurance companies. 

Ashlesh Gosain, head of south Asia sales at Bloomberg, says XBRL allows the vendor to extract, process and publish the data much more quickly. “In addition, transparency is better since row labels are standardized, therefore increasing comparability of companies across industries,” he says, adding that the format provides Bloomberg users with increased timeliness in getting data from the the BSE. “Further, when results were reported only in PDF, for the micro-cap companies, which are companies with market cap of less than $25 million, we used to cover a limited number of data points. Now we will be covering all the data points even for micro-cap companies,” Gosain says.

At the end of 2018, Bloomberg added real-time data feeds of the Gujarat International Financial Tec-City, which gives investors access to data for derivatives contracts listed on the India International Exchange and NSE international Exchange.