In Conversation: Transforming access to company data

Published: 22 April 2025

10 minute read

In this FRC ‘In Conversation’ podcast episode, Adam Mohamed, Head of Communications, discusses the recently launched digital reporting ‘Viewer’, a new free tool designed to improve access to structured company reporting data, with Phil Fitz-Gerald, Director of Digital Reporting and Taxonomies, Jennifer Guest, Head of XBRL UK Taxonomy Development, and Carl Palfrey, Lead Business Analyst at Companies House.

Listen to hear how the Viewer unlocks vast repositories of digital data and enables investors, businesses and the public to easily access and analyse company information.

Transcript

0:10
Hello, and welcome to another In Conversation podcast here at the FRC.

0:15
My name's Adam Mohamed, I'm the Head of Comms.

0:18
And today we're going to be talking about iXBRL, more specifically the viewer that we've recently made public.

0:25
And we're lucky enough to be joined by Phil Fitz-Gerald, who's our Director of Digital Reporting and Taxonomies, Jennifer Guest, who is our Head of XBRL and Taxonomies, and Carl Palfrey, who is a guest from Companies House, who is their Lead Business Analyst.

0:42
So thank you all for joining us.

0:43
Phil, I'm going to start with you.

0:46
And this is part of a wider project here at the FRC called CODEx, which stands for Company and Organisational Data Explorer.

0:54
Can you give us a sense of what that project is and what it's trying to achieve?

0:59
Yeah, so the aim of the CODEx project is really to make structured reporting data accessible to the public and regulators.

1:06
So the FRC, for a number of years we've enabled digital reporting, but actually it's been quite difficult to access that data and use it for analysis.

1:15
Actually, over 3,000,000 companies report digitally every year.

1:18
And now with this viewer, for the first time, that digital information is easily accessible using the iXBRL viewer that we've just released.

1:26
And you know, the best bit about it is it's free for anyone to use.

1:31
And Jennifer, turning to you, for those of us who aren't so familiar with this or this type of work, what is iXBRL or structured company data?

1:41
Thanks, Adam.

1:41
IXBRL is strictly inline extensible business reporting language.

1:47
But for those who are not particularly techie, it's the digital version of regulations or standards in computer code and at the same time in human readable format, which is the I in iXBRL.

2:01
That's what we do Adam, for our responsibility at the FRC of taxonomies and we enable digital reporting in iXBRL every year.

2:11
Fantastic.

2:12
And just for those guys as well who aren't so familiar, I mean, why is that important?

2:15
How does it enhance the reporting that we get through from companies?

2:19
Well basically it enables computers to read the reporting rather than just humans to read it.

2:27
So it makes it easier to analyse.

2:29
So the reporting is sent to Companies House or HMRC or FCA and their analysts, Carl being one of them, will analyse the reporting as it comes in XBRL format.

2:41
And as Carl will tell you, it's a hell of a lot easier to analyse if it's in XBRL than in paper format.

2:47
Brilliant.

2:47
Well, great opportunity for me to bring you in Carl.

2:50
So I mean, can you just give us a brief overview of, you know, how you guys at Companies House deal with this data, why it's so important to you?

2:59
Yeah, sure, Adam.

3:00
So as Jen has said, the actual account submissions that a company must submit to Companies House is probably one of the main pieces of information that's out there available.

3:10
And we actually put it out on our register and people are actually able to view the information that is contained in those accounts.

3:17
And that obviously is really important because it gives a member of the public or an organisation or like a credit reference agencies, etcetera, they're able to determine the worth of a company or how well the company is doing from their accounts, which has got all the key information that the company has.

3:35
And we want that information from the company.

3:38
That's part of the agreement that we provide them with the state.

3:41
This have been a limited company which allows them certain protections under law and as a sort of quid pro quo in that arrangement, they have to send us certain submissions to us and one of the most important submissions is the annual accounts of that company.

3:56
That shows how well that company is doing in the market really, or whatever chosen sector they're in.

4:03
We actually get accounts in three separate methods at the moment.

4:07
They can come in on paper, they can go on our web services or use software to submit those accounts.

4:13
The majority of people use our web services at the moment.

4:17
And that actually generates IXBRL, as Jennifer has already talked about.

4:22
And that allows an electronic version to be created as well as a HTML rendered version.

4:28
So you can actually have a look at it as if you was having a look at the paper set of accounts.

4:33
But it's also available in electronic format, which allows you to interrogate it with computers.

4:39
And of course, once you bring in the computers, you can start looking at many, many sets of accounts at once and doing much, much more than would be achievable in the manual world.

4:48
I think what you're saying there, Carl, is that having the data is one thing, and it's fantastic that we have so much of it.

4:55
Here's where we're talking about accessing it and kind of making it accessible to as many people as possible.

5:01
I guess, Jennifer, that's what the viewer that we've launched and made open to the public is all about.

5:07
Is that right?

5:08
Yes, Adam, that's exactly what it's all about.

5:10
It's making available the data to a wide audience.

5:15
So not just the investment analysts who've got their own systems, but the wider public credit rating agencies, a number of users, the financial data and other data actually to be able to view it and make their own decisions, either investment decisions or business decisions.

5:32
Or it might be just a member of the public who wants to look at who to give business to.

5:37
If they're having extension on the House, for example, they can look into the accounts of company's house to see that through the viewer.

5:44
So the viewer, you can see everything that is sent in expiral format to company's house and everything that is sent in expiral format to the FCA.

5:55
And that includes also charitable companies, Adam.

5:58
So we're quite excited about it because it's new products that is much more user friendly and open source, so everybody can use it free of charge.

6:08
So we hope that that will improve the quality of the data on the public record in the years to come and also enable people to make faster, more efficient, better economic decision so that that will feed into economic growth in the UK, Adam

6:22
I mean, that does sound fantastic.

6:24
I'm having some work done on my house, so I'm going straight home to look at the company who's doing that from here.

6:31
But it raises a really important point, which is previously to our having launched this tool, what challenges have there been in analysing the data that's been coming through in these reports?

6:42
And I guess the other question is, is there anything else out there that is doing similar things?

6:47
How is this different to other Viewers?

6:50
There are viewers that you can purchase, so they're not free of charge.

6:54
There are also some other open source viewers that are free of charge.

6:58
However, this UK iXBRL viewer is better than them because we've spent the 18 months of the project making sure that it is as user friendly for UK perspective and it's also UK user friendly for people with disabilities.

7:16
It's also available in the Welsh language, which is something that has to be taken into consideration for Companies House being located in Cardiff and also HMRC offices are located in Cardiff as well.

7:28
So that's the legal language.

7:30
So everything can be seen and viewed in Welsh if one wants to.

7:34
That's the main advantages over other viewers.

7:39
Brilliant.

7:39
I mean so as opposed to something that you might be able to pick up the shelf, but it might have been built with another jurisdiction in mind.

7:45
This is really UK specific and applicable to our environment.

7:50
Coming back to you then Carl, I mean how do you found the cross regulatory work in terms of the development of this view?

7:57
Is it something that you've been involved in heavily?

8:00
Have you been able to use it?

8:01
What's in the process there?

8:03
Yeah, the mind was heavily involved and it's part of the accounts team that look after the electronic world of accounts, as it were within Companies House.

8:10
So when the opportunity arose as to work on this project along with the FRC and FCA, we absolutely jumped at the chance and we wanted to contribute as much as we could.

8:20
Part of our strategy at Companies House, as I already alluded to, is to make all our accounts eventually available in this language in IXBRL, which is the core of our accounts service really.

8:32
And going forward, it'll be the only way you will be able to submit accounts to Companies House with very many minor exceptions that I should say for things that it's not actually written down or defined yet.

8:45
But the vast, vast majority of accounts that come into Companies House, unless this really specialist reason that people haven't got access to software, which is extremely unlikely in this modern world.

8:56
Of course, we see this language as the keystone to being able for people to submit quality accounts.

9:03
And also on the other side of the coin, for people who want to look at the information contained in those accounts to be able to see everything they need to about that company.

9:14
And the real thing about this view with it is really useful.

9:18
I think that you don't need to be an iXBRL expert in any way to be able to interrogate a set of accounts and find out all sorts of things about those accounts that you probably would not be able to find if you were trying to look at a paper copy or just trying to find some other way of searching it.

9:35
This tool does allow you to interrogate the accounts to quite at a granular level.

9:40
It's a key part of our service in the sense that we want to be able to make sure quality information comes into Companies House, but also to make that quality information available in a format that people can use to get the accounts information that they need to do all the sorts of things that Jennifer's already talked about.

9:58
And being able to interrogate those accounts in that granularity.

10:01
Like you say, I assume the real benefit here is better decision making off the back of that.

10:08
Yeah, exactly.

10:09
The whole point in the sense of us showing those accounts is a window into the company.

10:14
So the fact that you can get to the granularity of the real way that company is through their accounts, this is absolutely a key tool to do that.

10:25
And it sounds, and I think Phil made this point earlier around the number of accounts that we get in a digital format.

10:31
This really is the way that everything's going in the UK.

10:35
Are we in a good place?

10:36
I appreciate this tool might help us go even further.

10:40
Yeah, the vast majority of our accounts in one way or or another, whether it's generated from our web services or sent in to us via third party software is in electronic format.

10:52
There's only a small number.

10:53
Unfortunately they are the larger companies at the moment predominantly who are still submitting on paper.

11:00
As part of the ECCTA Act, the the registrar will have powers to mandate electronic submission of accounts.

11:08
So that will see the the vast majority of our accounts in electronic format really close to the 100%.

11:15
We're well on our way to that journey, but when it becomes mandatory to submit, obviously that will improve things more.

11:21
Phil, is there anything you'd like to add on the benefits that this will bring to the end user?

11:26
Yeah.

11:26
So as I say, in the past, you know, accessing digital reporting data was often difficult to access and to analyse.

11:35
By making this viewer available free for anyone to use, it creates new opportunities for businesses, investors, lenders and other stakeholders to make really informed decisions about their operations and investments.

11:47
It'll enable them to access the data quickly, to perform analysis on it and then make really good informed decisions about investment into UK businesses.

11:56
So I think it's a really good thing for the UK.

11:58
Fantastic.

11:59
So timely for this tool to be coming out now.

12:01
Jennifer, I'm going to turn back to you because we've just heard about the real benefits that this will provide the end user of the accounts.

12:09
But what about from a regulatory perspective or you know, we're working here across regulatory purposes with the FCA and Companies House and others.

12:18
How would this support regulators?

12:20
Well, it will help us to become more efficient, effective regulators to do our job better actually.

12:26
Because prior to now, and this goes back to your previous question, Adam, you know, it was quite difficult to extract data from lots of different sources to analyse it.

12:34
And sometimes it was necessary, particularly at the FRC, to purchase tools from the market, private tools at a cost, to help us analyse the data.

12:45
When we get to the new world where everything is reported in XBRL and consumed through looking at the viewer, then we are saving public money by having the necessary costs of purchasing expensive analytical equipment from the market.

12:58
We can do it ourselves and we can presumably analyse larger amounts of entities more quickly and arrive at better decisions as the regulators.

13:09
So it will improve the way we do business in the interests of the great British public.

13:15
Fantastic.

13:16
So I mean, we've heard that is is clearly the future, but what about the future of the viewer?

13:21
I mean, what's, what does the process look like going forward?

13:24
We've launched this in its beta phase, is that right?

13:26
We've launched it in its final phase.

13:28
So it went through beta.

13:30
So it's now in its final phase.

13:31
But in a sense that's a faux pas to say final because in the digital world, nothing's ever final.

13:37
We're always improving on a continuous learning curve and a continuous improvement curve.

13:41
So anyone who goes in the viewer will notice there's a an e-mail you can e-mail if you've got any suggestions for improvements.

13:47
So we will be taking into account anything that anybody emails us over the course of the next few months.

13:54
We are also working with a company called Workheaver who primarily responsible for the RL viewer on which our viewer was based.

14:03
So any improvements to the Arel viewer will automatically come through into the FRC IXBRL viewer.

14:10
And then we're working very closely with Carl at company's House and his counterparts at FCA to the future.

14:17
When in a year or two years time when Carl and Companies House are ready to incorporate the viewer into their systems, then that will be its future as well.

14:27
So it will be something that will be shared responsibility of many regulators in the UK.

14:32
And just add, Adam, at the moment we've got data in there from Companies House and FCA, but there's no stopping us putting other data in, for example, from the Charities Commission or other regulators in the UK.

14:45
So the scope of the data held by the viewer could increase in the future as well.

14:50
Well, thank you both.

14:52
That's been a bit of a whistle stop tour through IXBRL, especially for me.

14:56
Hopefully our audience has learned something as well.

14:59
I think probably for me to say it is open to everyone.

15:03
So head over to the FRC website where you can access the viewer and try.

15:08
And other than that, thank you, Carl.

15:10
Thank you, Jennifer and thank you Phil for your time and no problem.

15:14
Thank you very much.