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Investors will be able to access financial disclosures from all U.S. public companies and mutual funds in an interactive format within two years, as regulators replace a 1980s-vintage, text-based reporting system with an Internet-based platform.
The new system, called Interactive Data Electronic Applications, or IDEA, was introduced at a news conference Tuesday by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox.
IDEA is "a fundamental change in the way the SEC manages, collects and distributes information" that make it more accessible and reliable for investors, Cox said.
With the change, all the data in companies' SEC filings will be searchable on the Internet. Investors will be able to immediately collate information from thousands of companies, creating reports and analyses "on the fly, in any way they choose," the SEC said.
Around 90 companies have voluntarily been filing their disclosures to the SEC using the so-called XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, that provides advanced search capabilities with data-tagging. All public companies and mutual funds will be required to do so through the IDEA system within two years.
Edgar, the SEC's online reporting system since the 1980s, stores paper corporate filings in electronic form.
Rather than treating financial information as a block of text -- as in a standard Internet page or a printed document -- XBRL provides a unique identifying tag for each individual item of data, such as company net profit. That enables users to extract specific information more easily from SEC filings, run calculations and aggregate data without having to open and review multiple filings.
Companies' interactive data filings through IDEA are expected to begin being available late this year during the transition to the new system, the SEC said. Those who use the current reporting system will be able to continue doing so indefinitely.

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