On July 20, 2009, the website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) for fund information disclosure (http://fund.csrc.gov.cn/) was officially launched, which was the first time for the CSRC since its initiative in fund information disclosure in XBRL in early 2008 to display its achievements in XBRL adoption through a network platform. As a website especially designed for publishing XBRL documents of fund information disclosure, the fund information disclosure website will offer the publicly disclosed fund information including the latest daily reports on fund net value and the quarterly fund reports to the investors by taking advantage of the XBRL technology, which enables investors to access the useful and high quality fund information in a more efficient and easier way.

I. An Overview of Fund Information Disclosure in XBRL

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a computer mark-up language for definition and electronic communication of business and financial information. Its underlying principle is to label each basic financial data or other information element with a standardized electric tag and then define the relations among these elements so that the computer is able to read and exchange the documents composed of those elements such as financial statements. In recent years, XBRL has gradually appeared as a new solution to improving the quality of information disclosure on the capital market. Firstly, XBRL can realize the standardization of the electric information and the synchronization of the information processing, thus securing the information quality from the very beginning and enhancing the credibility of the information. Secondly, XBRL can realize the automation of the information processing, namely input once and use many times, thus avoiding the repetition and improving the work efficiency. Thirdly, XBRL can realize the information interaction. Through in-depth exploration and value-added services, investors and various organizations on the markets are able to exploit and employ considerable information in an easier way, thus improving the market transparency and increasing the social benefits.

As an important measure to boost the fundamental system construction of the capital market, the CSRC officially initiated the fund information disclosure in XBRL in early 2008. After all concerned parties’ one and a half years’ efforts, the fund information disclosure in XBRL has been carried out in an all-around way, with relevant technical specification, hardware platform, software development and application and work mechanism all seeing real and remarkable achievements. Firstly, in terms of the technical specification and legislation construction, since September 2008, documents including the XBRL taxonomy for fund information disclosure and the XBRL templates of the daily, quarterly, semi-annual and annual fund reports for information disclosure have been released in succession, standardizing both the business and the technology. Secondly, a number of technical innovations in the application of XBRL in software have been realized. The filing quality of the XBRL documents was secured thanks to the introduction of the CA certification and the mechanism of signing after review by the custodian banks. Besides, the filing efficiency of the XBRL documents was improved and the probability of refilling due to error was decreased thanks to the introduction of the real-time verifier and the most advanced formula linkbase technology. Thirdly, in terms of the hardware platform construction, all hardware facilities from the filing end to the displaying end were put into operation and have run smoothly for over half a year. The fund information disclosure website, sponsored by the CSRC and constructed by SSE Infonet Ltd., Co., comprises the filing platform and the information disclosure platform. Since the 3rd quarter of 2008, the whole industry has filed the XBRL documents of the quarterly fund reports on trial through the website. From January 1, 2009, the whole industry formally filed the XBRL documents of the daily reports on fund net value and the quarterly fund reports through the website. So far, the website has accumulated over 500,000 XBRL documents, synchronized the filing with the displaying, and realized the uninterrupted monitoring and maintenance in a 24 hours a day and 7 days a week manner. Fourthly, in terms of the XBRL working mechanism, the business mode of “open standard, open front-end, back-end service” was established. Through publishing the complete technical supporting material and introducing the fully competitive software supplier by the selection way of testing on compliance, the quality of the XBRL technical service was improved greatly.

Based on the fruits of the previous work and in order to make a breakthrough in the fund information disclosure in XBRL from filing to application and displaying, on July 20, 2009, the CSRC website for fund information disclosure was officially launched. The website, a sub-website of the CSRC, has its own special domain name and is independent of the CSRC website. The basic orientation of the website is “a specialized website for filing and disclosing the information to the CSRC in the form of XBRL instance documents according to laws and regulations by the fund information disclosure obligors”.  

II. Main Information Published in Fund Information Disclosure Website

So far, the XBRL instance documents, filed and displayed by the fund management companies through the fund XBRL filing platform and published in the fund information disclosure website, have mainly been the daily and quarterly fund reports. Through this website, investors can inquire about all fund’s XBRL instance documents of daily net value reports since January 1, 2009, some fund’s XBRL instance documents of the 3rd quarter reports of 2008 and all fund’s XBRL instance documents of quarterly reports since the 4th quarter of 2008. With the help of the display tools especially designed for XBRL, investors can quickly browse the fund reports in any chapters and sections, and visually examine the graphs generated according to the data of all kinds of fund. With the advancement of the project of fund information disclosure in XBRL, investors in the future will be able to inquire about the XBRL instance documents of the annual and semi-annual fund reports and the XBRL instance documents of the fund information disclosure documents including the fund’s special announcements, the fund prospectuses and the fund contracts through this website. By taking advantage of relevant analysis tools, investors will be able to compare and analyze relevant data both horizontally and longitudinally in the future.

Besides the XBRL documents, the fund information disclosure website also published the introduction to XBRL, the fund XBRL business and technical documents, the highlights in the XBRL promotion in the fund information disclosure, the basic information of all kinds of fund institutions, the PDF documents of some fund’s periodic reports, etc. for investors’ reference.

III. Objective of Establishing the Fund Information Disclosure Website

The launch of the fund information disclosure website, an integral part of the fund information disclosure in XBRL, will facilitate the breakthrough in the fund in XBRL from filing to application and pave the way for the deep analysis and exploration of the open fund data in the future, thus helping improve the transparency of the overall fund industry.

The fund information disclosure website aims t
☆ provide a standardized platform for disclosing the fund information in XBRL for the fund information disclosure obligors including the fund management companies;
☆ offer an online channel to investors to easily learn the fund, the fund management companies and the whole fund industry;
☆ furnish the fund analysis and consulting institutions and the fund sales companies with the standardized and open fund data to drive the scientific development of the fund evaluation system;
☆ assist the fund management companies in improving the quality of the disclosed information, strengthening the consciousness of operation with credibility and boosting the reengineering of the internal processes.