A Recent Addition by FASB of Three Implementation Guides to Extensible Business Reporting Language Series (XBRL)

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has added three Implementation Guides to the XBRL series, prepared to assist users of the U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy comprehend how certain disclosures are structured within the Taxonomy. The three Implementation Guides to the XBRL series includes two for the insurance industry and one for segment reporting.

What is U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy?

The Taxonomy is a listing of tags in XBRL. is used by the companies to tag specifically the thousands of portions of financial data that are included in typical long-form financial statements and related footnote disclosures. Computer using tags automatically search for, assemble, and process data so it can be easily accessed and studied by the users such as investors, analysts, journalists, regulators and other stakeholders.

Following are the three implementation guides to XBRL series:

U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy Implementation Guide—Insurance Industry: Concentration of Credit Risk Disclosures expresses modeling for disclosures of ceded credit risk with a single credit rating, multiple credit ratings, and those shown in more than one table.

U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy Implementation Guide—Insurance Industry: Reinsurance-Related Disclosures provides XBRL users with a model for disclosing risk management objectives and retention policies, effects of reinsurance, and the supplemental schedule of reinsurance, which is required by SEC Regulation S-X, 210.12-17. This Implementation Guide does not cover concentrations of credit risk resulting from reinsurance arrangements.

U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy Implementation Guide—Segment Reporting demonstrates the modeling for disclosures related to segment reporting.

The examples in each of these Implementation Guides are not meant to contain all of the possible modeling configurations or to dictate the appearance or structure of a company’s extension taxonomy, are only meant to help users of the taxonomy understand how the modeling for segment reporting is structured within the taxonomy.

The XBRL Implementation Guide series is an outcome of joint endeavors of the Financial Accounting Foundation and FASB to update the taxonomy for changes in U.S. GAAP, identify best practices in taxonomy extensions, and offer technical enhancements.