XBRL US announced a free half-day FinTech forum for financial technologists, investors, analysts, regulators, investor relations professionals and data providers: Crowdfunding & Data Standards. The forum, hosted by Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business and sponsored by the CFA Institute, is designed to provide an introduction to crowdfunding, the practice of funding a company or initiative by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, through Internet-based funding portals.
“Formalization of crowdfunding structures through Regulation Crowdfunding has increased the importance of data standards as investors consider their increased investment options,” opined James Allen, CFA, Head of Capital Markets Policy for the Americas at CFA Institute. “This forum looks to provide stakeholders from the issuer, investor and regulatory communities with insights into how crowdfunding systems will affect capital markets.”
The June 28 forum will focus on financing through crowdfunding, with a review and discussion of existing and anticipated programs and portals, and the role data standards can play in facilitating transparency and accountability in these exchanges. The program will also address Regulation Crowdfunding, a 2015 ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), based on Title III of the JOBS Act, which provides a framework for the regulation of registered funding portals and broker-dealers that serve as intermediaries in the offer and sale of securities.
The new SEC rule requires companies obtaining funding to report financial statement data for investors. As the global data standard widely used in financial markets today, XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) can provide a reliable and cost-effective data source for crowdfunding investors and portal owners, as they evaluate potential crowdfunding projects.
The event, which is free to all attendees, presents an opportunity to learn about crowdfunding and the rapidly changing regulatory landscape, and to help regulators, small businesses and financial intermediaries plan for the sector’s emerging importance to the financial markets.
“Crowdfunding aims to streamline and ease the process of obtaining financing for small businesses, raising relatively small amounts online from a large number of people to drive growth. The traditional costs associated with financing can be prohibitively high and data standards can be an effective means to enable transparency in financial reporting at an acceptable cost to issuers,” added Bankroll Ventures CEO Kendall Almerico.