The Financial Supervisory Service noted on the 7th that it has prepared a soft landing plan ahead of the new submission of XBRL annotated financial disclosures for small and medium-sized listed companies this year. The goal is to minimize potential market confusion as the number of small and medium-sized listed companies required to submit new XBRL annotated financial disclosures increases to over 1,800.
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an international standard computerized language designed for the generation, reporting, and analysis of corporate financial information. It is crafted in a form that can be used in other countries, referencing the guidelines set by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The introduction of XBRL is expected to enhance the efficiency of financial data distribution and increase accuracy and reliability. Domestic small and medium-sized listed companies will begin adopting XBRL annotations starting from the semi-annual reports in 2025.
The FSS has first prepared measures for a soft landing for small and medium-sized listed companies with assets under 500 billion won. These companies will not apply XBRL annotations to all reports, but only to business and semi-annual reports. For quarterly reports, the 'block tagging' method—creating a table of contents with an XBRL creator—will be applied until the end of 2028, after which detailed XBRL disclosures will be implemented.
The timing for submitting XBRL annotated disclosures will vary depending on asset size. Corporations with assets between 200 billion won and 500 billion won must submit their business reports by March of next year. Corporations with assets between 100 billion won and 200 billion won will need to submit their reports a year later, in March 2027, while those with assets under 100 billion won must submit their reports by March 2028.
To prevent any trial and error during the disclosure process for companies submitting new XBRL annotated financial disclosures, the FSS will operate a pilot submission and provide feedback on the results. Training for preparing XBRL will also be enhanced, along with quality checks by accounting firms.
The FSS plans to continuously improve features by adding user-friendly options to the XBRL financial statement preparer. It will also revise the 'Electronic Document Submission Guidelines' to reflect changes related to the alleviation of XBRL financial disclosures for small and medium-sized listed companies.