Blog

The Financial Reporting Council has just released the findings from its recent survey on structured digital reporting quality. The FRC Digital Reporting Review 2026 makes interesting and enlightening reading for anyone responsible for financial reporting in the UK. 

What is the Financial Reporting Council? The FRC’s Role in Reporting Quality

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) exists to uphold high standards of corporate governance, corporate reporting, audit and actuarial work.

As such, the FRC is the UK body responsible for overseeing the quality of financial reporting — traditionally via paper reports and now for digital reports that are increasingly read by AI.

As the FRC says, “the rapid and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence has increased the importance of companies providing accessible, high-quality machine‑readable data”. 

This structured digital reporting (SDR) is well established in the UK. It changes static financial and corporate information into machine-readable, interactive data using formats such as iXBRL. 

(iXBRL [Inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language] is a digital format for submitting financial statements. It embeds machine-readable tags directly into a human-readable HTML document, allowing software to process the data automatically while still enabling people to read the report normally.)

As part of its work, the Council publishes regular quality reviews of iXBRL filings submitted to the FCA. 

Why Structured Digital Reporting Matters More Than Ever

Since 2021, UK-listed companies must file annual reports in iXBRL format to the FCA’s National Storage Mechanism. 

Driven by the shift towards AI tools and institutional investors relying on machine-readable data — rather than static documents like PDFs — to analyse and compare companies, structured digital reporting is a core component of the UK’s reporting cycle. iXBRL reporting quality is a non-negotiable here.

What Does The FRC’s New Report Tell Us? 

The FRC has reviewed 30 listed companies’ 2024/25 structured digital reports — and while most files are broadly compliant, the findings also show recurring errors which are avoidable.

The core message is clear: structured data isn’t a technical afterthought. With AI increasingly consuming iXBRL reports to drive investment decisions, poor tagging quality has real consequences for how your company is seen.

The Nine Issues The FRC Identified

In its review, the Council highlighted nine areas where companies can improve their performance:

1. Inconsistent tagging depth: Notes covering multiple topics are only given a single high-level tag; granular or nested tags are missed
2. Tags chosen by label, not meaning: Report publishers are picking tags based on wording similarity rather than underlying accounting concept, causing the same figure to be tagged differently in different places
3. Unnecessary custom extensions: Bespoke tags are being created where standard ones already exist, especially in cash flows, equity movements, and alternative performance measures
4. Weak anchoring: Extensions are technically anchored, but to overly broad concepts, reducing their analytical value
5. EPS scaling errors: Earnings per share figures are being scaled to thousands/millions rather than pence, producing wildly distorted data when extracted
6. Poor website availability: Some companies are still not publishing their iXBRL report (with a viewer) on their investor site — limiting access for both investors and AI tools
7. Unresolved validation errors: Warnings flagged during preparation are being ignored rather than investigated
8. Late or failed filing: Around 10% of companies filed late; some had no file on record at the NSM at all
9. UK-specific tag misapplication: UKSEF mandatory tags are being applied to the wrong entity (group tags on parent-only data), creating compliance risk

What This Means in Practice

Some of the FRC’s findings are purely technical or digital issues, but most are not; they’re process and review failures.

Errors often slip through because iXBRL is treated as the final step rather than an integral part of reporting, with insufficient time built in for review.

The Council is clear in its conclusion and recommendations: robust review, clear ownership, and sufficient time in the production process are what separate good filings from problematic ones.

Errors in financial data and filing timeliness errors are highlighted in particular as issues that are entirely avoidable with a professional approach to financial reporting and the right checks in place.

What Can You Learn: Getting Your Process Right

What can you take away from the FRC’s findings — not just on technical accuracy, but for process improvement and wider reporting quality?

• Build review time into your production schedule, not as an afterthought
• Challenge your tagging agent or software vendor on extensions: can a standard tag do the job?
• Don’t forget a post-submission check: confirm your filing is actually visible and published on the NSM rather than assuming it went through
• Make the iXBRL report (with viewer) available in your investor relations section — not only is this good for investors, it’s increasingly important for AI accessibility

You can read the FRC’s full report here for details of all the findings.

The Council’s conclusions should act as a prompt for UK businesses; not only on iXBRL tagging, but around all your reporting processes.

Structured reporting quality is now inseparable from reporting credibility, and structured reporting should be seen as an ongoing quality discipline, not a one-time implementation task.

Working with experts like Perivan’s financial reporting teams provides expert support for compliant, high-quality structured digital filings. 

For integrated production that treats digital filing as part of the process, not a bolt-on, and quality as a must-do, not a nice-to-have, why not talk to our team ahead of your next filing.