The 43rd ASEAN+3 Bond Market Forum (ABMF) and 14th XBRL Asia Round Table (XART) meeting has been held this week in Kyoto, Japan, kindly hosted by Kyoto University. Attended by more than 150 policy makers, regulators, financial market participants and reporting professionals, this annual event represents a very targeted collaboration, focussed on the development and expansion of financial markets across Asia.

Led by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), these meetings were originally initiated as part of the ADB’s effort to stimulate the creation of consistent and effective local legal frameworks, high-quality market infrastructure and active and efficient fixed income markets, for both sovereign and corporate bonds across Asia. The ABMF is a highly successful case study in careful capacity building. The meeting has been expanded over the last decade to include a particular focus on digitisation of reporting in the region, together with policy developments for sustainable finance (including green and social bonds and digital sustainability disclosures), enhancing cross-border settlement infrastructure and exploring opportunities for digital bond creation and regulation. The open and careful collaboration, cross fertilisation of ideas and goodwill amongst participants has always been a hallmark of the ABMF.

This week there were some interesting presentations from startups associated with Kyoto University, including groups developing key components for fusion reactors, crowd-sourcing biodiversity data, low carbon localised fertiliser production for developing markets, and even membrane filters for seawater-based decarbonisation. The team from Tokyo-based startup, Sustainability Lab, provided a run down on their analysis of the improved corporate governance performance of Japanese corporates following the introduction of Supervisory or Oversight Boards and a number of other governance reforms. They use a comprehensive XBRL-based analysis of EDINET data in their analysis.

The XBRL focus this week has been on digital reporting generally, digital sustainability disclosures, AI innovations and regulatory trends.

Some of the meeting highlights included:

• The presentation from Dato’ Mohammad Faiz Azmi, Chair of the Malaysian Securities Commission, who brings exceptional insights and leadership in harnessing financial markets, local corporates, the accounting and audit profession, and his international network to bring practical solutions to seemingly intractable challenges associated with funding adaptation needs in Malaysia.
• The presentation from National Bank of Cambodia Governor, HE Dr Chea Serey, outlining the transformational impact of the “Bakong” digital payments system set up by the Bank to radically democratise payments, including rural remittances. Her presentation demonstrated the exceptional nature of her leadership.
• The presentation from Björn Fastabend on his work harnessing AI tools to expand the types and range of questions that supervisors can ask of their XBRL data holdings, while keeping those systems honest, with both traditional BI tools and an ethics and provenance framework that can support financial regulators as they expand their capabilities.
• The presentation from XBRL International CEO, John Turner, on the impact of new technologies on disclosure, the importance of digital sustainability disclosures in the region, and importance, in Asia, of utilising the ISSB taxonomy as the baseline for these disclosures, to ensure comparability and consistency, even in situations in which the IFRS standards are republished as a local set of standards.

We would like to strongly congratulate Mr Satoru Yamadera (or Tomo-san as he is better known) on his recent retirement from the ADB and his continued strategic work with the ABMI and ABMF. Tomo-san has provided strong, visible and tireless leadership of the ABMF since its inception, including through a number of financial crises. Thanks also go to Yoshiaki Wada, Chair of the XART, and our own Revathy Ramanan for all of her work in helping to facilitate the XBRL aspects of the meeting.

More XBRL-related presentations from across the region are still happening as we publish this newsletter. Look out for more news next week. Presentations will be available in the next few weeks.