Surety providers review the contractor’s financial statements to identify risks and determine eligibility for surety bonds. Financial statements include a Work in Process (WIP) report that describes the financial performance and status of a contractor’s construction projects. Today’s surety underwriting process is highly manual and therefore, labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly.
Using Standards to Streamline the Process and Reduce Costs
The XBRL data standard renders paper-based information computer-readable, reducing costs and delays. Bringing XBRL into the surety underwriting process will make the WIP report computer-readable with data that can be extracted automatically into the sureties financial system without rekeying.
How It Will Work
Contractors can create XBRL-formatted WIPs by using pre-formatted Excel spreadsheets that are mapped to the WIP Taxonomy, or by extracting information from their own internal financial systems. The surety receiving the XBRL-formatted WIP can ingest the data automatically into their financial management systems after they’ve performed a one-time mapping that allows them to read the concepts reported.
Resources
All resources are available on the XBRL-US Surety Industry Web Page.
- Review the Standards to Automate Processing for Contractors, Agents & Sureties to see demonstrations of XBRL Surety Data extracted from documents.
- Streamline Data Collection in Surety Underwriting infographic easily explains the process.
Last Updated: May 23, 2017
