Kristin Moyer

Mary Knox here. Today Business Wire reported that Ms Jamie Shay, Head of Standards for SWIFT, is one of three new members appointed to the XBRL International Board of Directors. This follows the March 2009 announcement that Chris Church, SWIFT CEO of Americas and Global Head of Securities, joined the XBRL US board.

I think this appointment bolsters Gartner’s recent rating of XBRL’s maturity.  SWIFT, an international consortium of over 8,000 financial services firms, industry utilities, and their commercial customers stretching across more than 200 countries, brings significant expertise and long-term experience in standards development, implementation and migration. They also bring their relationship with ISO and the development of ISO 20022, which seeks to bring harmonization across different standards initiatives. SWIFT’s skills complement the skills demonstrated by the XBRL organization in driving rapid standards development and adoption, and the development of unique functionality that increases the usefulness of the XBRL standard.

The close working relationship which appears to be developing between SWIFT and XBRL gives added hope that XBRL will take on the needed additional discipline around taxonomy interoperability, certifications, and tempered change. And SWIFT can learn from XBRL as well, bringing some of the dynamic XBRL approach to SWIFT MT, 15022 and 20022 standards.