“Pillar III transparency:

Corporate Social Responsibility with XBRL”

at the Banking Supervision Track, June 25

Enrique Bonsón, Francisco Flores and José Luís Lizcano

Spanish Accounting and Business Administration

Association [AECA]

1998 - Hoffman - AICPA - XBRL International - global movement 2000 – University of Huelva – national and international research 2002 - AECA - provisional jurisdiction 2004 – Bank of Spain - XBRL Spain - CNMV - DGI – financial sector 2007 - Red.es - public sector - private sector 2008 – RSC taxonomy as a contribution to the global XBRL network

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerged in the official discourse of the EU in 2000.

Comparative studies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are relatively rare, certainly as contrasted with other related fields, such as comparative corporate governance or comparative corporate law.

Moreover, the field of empirical CSR research generally has been hampered by the lack of a consistent definition of the construct of CSR, as well as its operationalization and measurement, as recently pointed out by McWilliams, Siegel, and Wright (2006) and Rodríguez, Siegel, Hillman and Eden (2006).

Cynthia A. Williams and Ruth V. Aguilera

Lance Moir has collected many other definitions

CSR can be supported by a broad set of quality standards and proposals:

6,600,000 results in Google

CSR can be seen as a competitive advantage in the XXI century business environments: for instance, the growing use of green stock market indexes

Many recent citations in academic discussion

Many recent citations in academic discussion

Previous research in Pillar III

◦ We have studied the effect of size in transparency levels

◦ Basel II Pillar III requirements tested◦ Showing results…

The Bank of International Settlements, Basel, Switzerland

Banks must declare a lot of new information obligatory in their public Websites. [88 new items ordered by the BIS]

Are there any banks declaring this information in advance?

Only the greater banks satisfy those requirements today, in advance to the entry into force of Basel II -2008 in EU-.

If small banks do not declare it, they will fall in a lack of transparency and trust in front of their depositors and investors. Reasons: complexity, lack of data sources and efficient systems to collect complex financial risk information.

So, according to this first part, we have detected the need for help, specially in the smallest banks.

CSR increases its impact in the financial work.

Could it be a solution for small banks to increase the levels of transparency and also to anticipate future evolution on regulations?

CSR is expressed in different formats.

◦ Presentations◦ PDF◦ MS Excel spreadsheets◦ Video◦ …

All formats detected are mainly human-oriented, not tractable information.

Much work is needed to process CSR information in an efficient manner, and also to audit this new amount of data.

CSR lacks of a minimum of clarity, is too industry-specific and the format in which it is based is not suitable to comparisons.

A double solution:◦ Semantic agreement◦ Digital format

aeca (Spanish Association of Accounting and Management) www.aeca.es

Study in deep: international quality standards and proposals in different areas covered by the CSR umbrella.

In contact with the GRI consortium Taking full advantage of the highly active XBRL Spanish

Jurisdiction

Indicators grouped as follows:

The effort is to try to quantify as much as possible to reinforce comparisons and rankings.

No full technical advantages, for this first version, in order to guarantee the maximum of implantation. Dimensions and Formulas will be considered in the next future.

Tuples that allows, for each indicator, to provide the information, or to declare if the indicator is suitable for the business or not, or if the information required is suitable but not available.

The Discoverable Taxonomy Set consists of a list of three

taxonomies that are presented below

RSC Taxonomy is internationally applicable. We will try to promote the use and knowledge of this proposal.

RSC could be an industry-validated instrument for academic research.

Some new projects for extensions: chemical industry, saving banks, public funds comptrollers, foundations and other non-for-profit entities.

RSC Taxonomy has been considered for international acknowledgement by XBRL International.

RSC will converge with the GRI Taxonomy in future versions, and will collect as much feedback as possible in this first stage.

RSC will incorporate more suggested quality standards and will evolve at the same time than the existing set of considered standards.

RSC will consider the application of some XBRL advances, like Dimensions and Formulas. Software vendors will be invited to design viewers and instance creators.

This taxonomy has been recently acknowledged by XBRL International, and we are now starting the international implementation stage, when the feedback will be essential.

So, all members and businesses implicated will appreciate to enjoy the opportunity to obtain your feedback after the conference.

RSC Taxonomy◦ http://www.xbrl.es/informacion/rsc.html

AECA◦ http://www.aeca.es

University of Huelva◦ http://www.uhu.es ◦ The International Journal of Digital Accounting Research

http://www.uhu.es/ijdar

info@aeca.es