Finance 2.0

I've had the great pleasure and privilege of presenting the CFA Institute Comprehensive Business Reporting Modell as well as its position on XBRL to the 17th XBRL Conference in Eindhoven. Needless to say that this was also a great opportunity to share & discuss some thoughts about the future path of financial research with participants. 

The slides of my presentation are available here, but I'm already in the process of reworking them, taking on board new ideas from the peer discussions. My thinking goes along the lines that XBRL will be a disruptive force in finance eventually, but not in the immediate future as data intermediaries are well positioned to leverage their incumbent interfaces with the cheaper and faster fundamental information. For them, XBRL will be sustaining - for a while. That also means that most professional investors - at least those on the sell side - will not care much about XBRL since they are receiving the goods indirectly via improved third party providers. Disruption will come to them by other means, however ... I am looking forward to this conference in the fall, which should firmly establish the debate among investment professionals.