CODEx Project: Beta Phase insight
The FRC launched the Company & Organisational Data Explorer (CODEx) Project in September 2023. The project is supported by Companies House, FCA, the Charity Commission, HMRC and others and is funded by DSIT as part of the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund[1] .
The project is designed to optimise the value for the public and for regulators from the millions of annual reports that are filed in a structured data file format (iXBRL) in the UK. These annual reports are rich in accounting, financial and reporting information. This project is supporting the FRC to deliver two key priorities to support growth – underpinning investor and broader confidence in UK plc and identifying and preparing for future trends and innovation. By making the data easy to use and reuse, we are facilitating more informed and quicker stakeholder decision making.
We are accelerating the use of XBRL data from the iXBRL annual reports, by:
- building an iXBRL viewer (the Viewer) – a public tool to display individual or a small number of iXBRL annual reports, showing the embedded financial and non-financial tagged data in the context of the human-readable report; and
- developing skills, blueprints, and private tools for XBRL bulk data analysis by regulators and agencies (the Toolkit).
After completing the Discovery and Alpha phases, the CODEx project moved into the Beta phase. Beta is about building and testing your product, first with a limited number of people to use and feedback on the service then more widely for “real life” usage and testing.
Developing functionalities for the Viewer
The Beta phase was delivered in two phases: Private Beta and Public Beta. The Private Beta phase first addressed feedback from the committees on the architectural design established in the Alpha phase. As a result, we chose to do real-time processing of iXBRL reports with serverless compute service, AWS Lambda. We have also implemented an automated task to process the FCA filings as soon as they are available through FCA's NSM.
After completing the development of all prioritised requirements, we initiated a Public Beta phase. This phase was initially restricted to a select group of users to ensure controlled feedback and testing. During this period, we actively gathered feedback from end users, which provided valuable insights into the user experience and potential areas for improvement. Based on the feedback received, we implemented several enhancements to address any issues and improve the overall functionality of the product. Once these enhancements were made, we proceeded to launch the product to the general public without any restrictions, ensuring a smooth and well-received release.
The UK iXBRL Viewer is available at: https://ukixbrlviewer.org.uk
Watch an introduction to the Viewer, which includes a demonstration of its features.
Putting tools in the toolbox
In the Alpha phase the team worked with our regulatory partners to develop tools that answered our regulatory use cases. This led to a list of areas to focus on to make sure the Toolkit was ready for Beta.
Throughout the Autumn we worked on upgrading the capabilities in the Toolkit the most significant change was significantly expanding the scope of companies, moving from an initial 4,000 to over 55,000 annual reports.
What data is included in the Toolkit?
The break down of files within the Toolkit
Companies House - charity filings
- All Charities with XBRL that are not Micro entities
- 5,285 unique charities
Companies House - large and medium sized entities
- All PLCs or companies which had a large or medium metric based on the new two-step process
- 24,622 unique companies
FCA filings
- All available mandatory iXBRL filings (filed in 2021-2024)
- Issuers of securities trading on regulated markets only
- Consolidated financial statements only
- 749 unique companies
With a larger data set in place, we could really explore where the Toolkit added value and this resulted in a series of PowerBI reports focused on answering regulatory questions. We found that the Toolkit powerfully showed how XBRL data combined with other data sets created a unique resource and allowed us to explore topics in ways that would not be possible without access to this data.
A screenshot from the Toolkit showing Accounting Standards Prevalence
In the Beta/Live phase it was also important to continue to gather feedback from our partners. We therefore held triangulation meetings with each regulator to demonstrate the improvements, gather feedback and validate the Toolkit's potential.
Documenting and Sharing Insights
As the project draws to a conclusion, the team are now focused on documenting their learnings and creating a public blueprint of the digital infrastructure and data model. This documentation will serve as a valuable asset for those wishing to replicate the Toolkit's capabilities and encourages others to experiment with the data.
Find out more about CODEx or get in contact with the CODEx team.
Footnotes
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[1]
In November 2022, BEIS awarded the FRC a grant of £796,000 via the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund to deliver CODEx. The RPF is a grant-based fund to enable UK regulators and local authorities to help create a UK regulatory environment that encourages business innovation and investment. The current £12m round is being delivered by the DSIT.