November 27, 2024

• 

The Financial Supervisory Service (Herald DB)

The Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure board has gotten a new update from Monday, providing foreign investors with more English information on financial disclosures.

With the update, when firms file disclosures on DART, the name of the company, report title and name of the attached files will be available in English on the English version of the website at the same time as the Korean one.

Previously, English disclosures were only available when Kospi and Kosdaq-listed companies voluntarily submitted them.

The translations will be available for all Kospi, Kosdaq and Konex listed companies, as well as unlisted firms.

Still, translations for entire filings are yet to be available.

“With this update, foreign investors can now become more aware of new disclosures,” an FSS official said. “Until recently, it was difficult for foreigners to know that there was a new disclosure because the filings were made in Korean only.”

The official, however, admitted that foreigners still have to rely on translation services or directly inquire with the companies to get a translation of the whole report.

The English service comes as part of a joint decision in January by the nation’s three financial organizations – the Financial Services Commission, the FSS and the Korea Exchange — to gradually make important disclosures in English mandatory.

Starting in 2024, Kospi-listed companies with total assets exceeding 10 trillion won ($7.8 billion) will be required to submit key disclosures in English within three business days after the Korean disclosure.

As a part of this initiative, the FSS began working on updating DART's English website in April to improve access for foreign investors.

Starting from the third quarter, the FSS will also provide an updated extensible business reporting language (XBRL) viewer in English.

The current viewer on DART only provides basic information such as amounts in the financial statements.

The new XBRL viewer will allow users to access more detailed information such as the debit and credit on the balance sheets and compare the data on an international scale.

Next year, the FSS also plans to offer English translation for the table of contents and format items in the text.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)