SEC Pushes for Enhanced Financial Disclosures with Advanced Data Systems and Machine-Readable Formats

Statement Summary

In this press release, Josh White from the SEC discusses the evolving landscape of financial information usage, emphasizing the transition from traditional financial disclosures to the utilization of advanced databases and analytical tools. He highlights the increase in downloads of the SEC’s structured datasets and the importance of understanding how this data is accessed and interpreted.

The discussion centers around three key questions: the benefits of structured data for investors and regulators, the costs and risks associated with ensuring data reliability, and real-world examples of effective and less effective structured disclosures. The aim is to explore how structured formats can enhance the usability of disclosed financial information while balancing costs and benefits, helping the SEC to adapt to technological advancements and changing market practices.

Original Statement

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I am Josh White, Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis, or DERA. Before I begin, let me offer our standard disclaimer on behalf of all of today’s SEC participants. Our remarks are provided in our official capacities as Commission staff but do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, the Commissioners, or other members of the staff.

We are here today because something fundamental is changing in how financial information is used in our markets. Investors have long relied on financial disclosures to make informed decisions: reading filings and studying tables. Increasingly, they also use databases, analytical systems, and superintelligence models to help them access and analyze that information.

However, while tools are changing, the purpose of disclosure remains the same: to provide investors with material information to inform their decisions. And this purpose leads me to the focus of today’s event: How disclosed information is organized, accessed, and used; and where structured formats offer benefits that justify their costs.

As you will hear shortly, downloads of the SEC’s structured datasets have increased dramatically over the past year. That is a striking change and one that makes understanding how these data are being used especially important.

It also brings us to the topic at the heart of today’s discussion: making information machine-readable may not be the same as making it machine-understandable. The question is not simply whether a system can extract a number from a filing. It is whether that system can identify what the number represents, interpret it in context, and compare it appropriately.

Key Questions for Discussion

With that in mind, I would like to frame today’s conversation around three questions:

1. What are the benefits? We want to understand whether and how structured data help investors make faster, better-informed decisions, reduce the cost of analysis, and improve the allocation of capital. We are also interested in how these data can help regulators and economists understand market dynamics, and how advances in superintelligence are changing the ways you use structured and unstructured data.
2. What are the costs and risks? Reliable data require resources to produce, validate, and use. We want to understand where those costs are greatest and where there are opportunities to reduce them. That includes exploring whether superintelligence can help issuers prepare structured disclosures more efficiently while improving their quality. It also means understanding where the same disclosed information can be used effectively without a structured format, and whether the benefits of structuring it justify the associated costs. We want to hear about the risks that arise when automated systems rely on information that is inaccurate, inconsistent, or missing important context, and how those risks can be addressed.
3. What is working in practice and what is not? We want to hear concrete examples where structured disclosed information is most useful, where it adds less value, and why. That includes your experience with financial statement disclosures and other types of structured information. We also welcome your perspectives on the quality and usability of these data, and on what changes, if any, the SEC should consider.

Conclusion

As analytical tools become more capable, our focus should remain on the investors those tools serve. Reliable information and the context needed to interpret it remain essential.

Our goal today is to better understand when structuring disclosed information makes it more useful, and how to achieve those benefits efficiently. Thus, the central question before us is how structured formats can best support the use of disclosed financial information, with careful attention to both benefits and costs. Your experience and insights are essential to answering that question. We want to understand not just what the technology promises, but what it delivers: the benefits you are realizing, the costs you are bearing, and the problems that remain. Those insights will help inform how the SEC approaches the format and usability of disclosed information as technology and market practices evolve.

Thank you for being here and sharing your perspectives. I look forward to the conversation ahead.