From Mr Robert D. Kugel.

Sir, Jay Starkman (Letters, December 10) is sorely misinformed when he states that “first practical use of XBRL appears to be helping the Securities and Exchange Commission discover illegally backdated stock options”. On the contrary, XBRL has been used for years by banks to automate their regulatory filings in the US, Japan and other countries, cutting the amount of time and effort it takes to process and analyse these documents. It is not just a regulator's dream – it is being used by a tiny staff at the non-profit Microfinance Information Exchange to automate collection and publication of information from thousands of these small lenders worldwide.