This isn’t earth shattering, the main provisions of IFRS 9 are coming into force in January 2018 and naturally there will be changes to the format of published financial statements.  The EU uses this as the basis for statutory returns that firms must make under CRR.  The original delegated regulation for this is 2014/680 and parts of this are now being updated by 2017/1443.  But the size of these technical rules is illustrative of the costs of regulation.  2014/680 is 1,861 pages long with hundreds of reporting items defined and referenced for inclusion in an electronic submission framework.  The update is a mere 527 pages and all firms will need to update their reporting to comply for the first reports which will be for Q1 2018.  That said once the update is complete the compliance should be fairly automatic for a firm that already has its IFRS lines produced at a detailed level.

On this subject there are firms that email MIS spreadsheets daily to their regulators which is considerably more primitive and time-consuming for both sides.  If the EU was serious about promoting efficiency it ought to put a time bar on how long these solutions should permitted before electronic submission is required.  Or perhaps make it part of a scorecard which leads to a capital add-on reflecting the higher risks a firm carries when it tolerates weak reporting infrastructure.