The SEC has voted on Chairman Cox's pet XBRL project and the results are unanimous, just the way Cox likes them. Mutual funds will now be able to submit data on their risks and returns in the XBRL format.

The SEC gave its greenlight on the addition of mutual funds to the XBRL pilot program. The commission has noet yet decided if or when they will make the pilot program for mutual funds mandatory. If enough funds use XBRL in their filings, investors will be able to use a simple tool to analyze and compare funds.

"The approval means the industry is moving forward with the XBRL filing process. The voluntary filing process is just the beginning," said Kirk Botula, chief operating officer at data company Confluence, told The MFWire.

Pittsburgh-based Confluence is currently one of the companies participating in the SEC's XBRL pilot program.

Botuala says that they have also made the program QuickTag, the only commercially available tool so far to support XBRL, available on their Web site.

"One day XBRL will become standard like HTML," Botula said.  

Edited by: Erin Kello


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