XBRL Advisory Council (XAC)

I'm equally proud and humbled to read that my mandate at the XAC on behalf of CFA Institute has been renewed for a second (and last) term. To bring to bear the analyst / investor perspective on the (as yet barely existing) investor usage of XBRL is a tall order indeed, but joining forces with DVFA's Ralf Frank, there is a fighting chance to make sure that that angle's crucial importance remains recognised despite the low adoption for now.

The Future of the Occupational Retirement Act

The book Zukunft BVG (The Future of the Swiss Occupational Retirement Act) has just been published. I have contributed an article about the Prudent Investor Standard and its alleged implementation in Switzerland. The article will also appear in an abridged, English version in the forthcoming December issue of IPE, to which we will link as soon as it becomes available. Comments are very welcome!

Hedge accounting does not account for longevity hedges

Tuesday's ARG meeting was extraordinarily interesting, for it held a good and a bad surprise: Meeting the incoming IASB Chairman Hans Hoogervorst was a pleasant surprise, while discovering that the hedge accounting project underway will actually discourage longevity hedging if the standard were to stand as it currently does. This is a consequence of the proposed architecture of pensions accounting. Hence there appears to be no easy way out.

However, this outcome is deeply unsatisfactory and should be addressed. While there are not very many cases to account for at present, it would be unfortunate indeed if effective management techniques for the second most important risk facing pension funds were developed, only to be thwarted by accounting artefacts. Watch this space!

More XBRL in Switzerland

On 10 November, the second instalment of the XBRL CH Swiss Day (Agenda in German here) will bring an afternoon full of XBRL goodness in and to Switzerland. We will have a keynote on XBRL in the future of business reporting, two parallel tracks focused on Switzerland and IFRS respectively and finally, a closing panel which I'm looking forward to because of its composition and direction ("possibilities and impediments"). I'm particularly keen on the event because we will be releasing the first public draft of the Swiss OR Taxonomy into the wild for public comment. Please touch base if you're interested to contribute your comments.

The Power of Pull

The History of Information, by David Siegel from dsiegel on Vimeo.

Pull by David Siegel presents a fascinating introduction into the concept of semantic web, its technologies and options. He looks at a number of facets, with XBRL being prominent because of its advanced stage of implementation. Others are not so convincing: the fairtax chapter proposes no less than a tax revolution without even arguing why that tax system is superior to VAT - but this digression risks to escalate.

The book frequently refers to its own website, which shows interesting developments, but is painfully slow to build when accessed in a browser. Fortunately that problem goes away if you subscribe to its feed. Overall, Pull is a quick and easy to read introduction for non-technical people without much OWLing and RDFing. It's definitely worth your while if you're interested in the next evolutionary stage of the internet.