Basel-II News

MIX and UBmatrix Launch XBRL Solutions for Microfinance Industry

(june 05, 2007)-- The Microfinance Information Exchange, business information provider for the microfinance industry, and UBmatrix, the leading provider of XBRL information exchange solutions, today announced the launch of a new XBRL-based solution designed to streamline and standardize financial information reporting in the microfinance industry. The solution was developed using products and services from UBmatrix.

The Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), the microfinance industry information clearinghouse, tracks the performance of 880+ microfinance service providers (also known as microfinance institutions or MFIs), primarily banks, non-bank financial intermediaries, cooperatives and NGOs, to promote and support greater information exchange and transparency within the microfinance industry. The organization was founded in 2002 by a partnership that includes the non-profit Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a donor consortium; the Citigroup Foundation; the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation; the Rockdale Foundation; and the Open Society Institute, among other foundations.

Through information exchange, MIX seeks to promote microfinance lending to meet the financial service needs of populations in poor, emerging markets. Through small loans, savings, access to payment facilities, insurance or other financial services, microfinance institutions help the poor increase their incomes and build businesses.

MIX was formed to address one of the key challenges of the microfinance industry: the lack of reliable, comparable and publicly available information on the financial strength and performance of MFIs. MIX Is widely referred to as "the backbone" of the microfinance industry.

To further its mission and help underpin the development of the market, MIX embarked on developing and implementing reporting standards to be used by hundreds of microfinance institutions.

Given the growing use of XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) as the standard for financial information exchange and reporting, MIX decided to standardize on XBRL for the microfinance industry. Use of XBRL is accelerating largely because of recent regulatory developments, including the FDIC adopting XBRL as the standard for reporting for its 8,200 member banks; the European Union Central Banks in Basel II adopting XBRL for reporting beginning in 2007; and the SEC setting the stage for XBRL reporting with a pilot XBRL reporting program.

The key elements of the information exchange solution the MIX is building with UBmatrix include:

-- Microfinance Industry Taxonomy: XBRL offers a standards-based method of articulating the information requirements for the microfinance industry. Since MIX plays a key role in aggregating microfinance market data, MIX worked with UBmatrix to develop an XBRL taxonomy that will help formalize, drive adoption of, and ease compliance to its member banks and organizations.

-- Microfinance Industry Database: With the XBRL standard and their microfinance taxonomy as the foundation, MIX asked UBmatrix to implement UBmatrix Enterprise Application Suite to help MIX collect, process, transform and then report on the complex data it receives from its 880+ participating microfinance service providers. Each microfinance service provider reports more than 250 pieces of data to MIX. The data is used to
aggregate their industry benchmark database and provide reports to help MFIs track their performance, and provide increased transparency, confidence and investment in the microfinance industry.

-- Reporting Platform: Another key aspect of the project, MIX, working with UBmatrix, is implementing the UBmatrix Reporting Manager as a solution for member banks and organizations to help them efficiently report to MIX.Reporting Manager will enable MIX to automate its reporting workflow and will provide microfinance institutions with reporting templates and a portal to store and submit their XBRL report submissions. The solution ensures data quality and provides useful and immediate feedback on data validation.

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