On 25 March 2022, the FCA published Consultation Paper 22/5 ‘Proposed changes to allow companies to use a more up to date electronic format for their annual financial reports’ (CP22/5).

The proposals in CP22/5 are relevant to issuers who follow Disclosure, Guidance and Transparency Rules (DTR) 4.1.

Under current rules, issuers who are in scope of DTR 4.1 must prepare their annual financial report in the electronic reporting format required by DTR 4.1.14R.

The FCA currently allows issuers to use, among other permitted taxonomies, the UKSEF 2022 taxonomy issued by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) on 8 October 2021 (v1.0.0) to mark up their annual financial statements within the annual financial report.

Earlier this year, the FRC issued a replacement version of the taxonomy in its 2022 taxonomy suite (v.2.0.0 ), which reflects updated standards following recently adopted EU legislation on the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF).

The FCA now propose to change the definition of UKSEF 2022 in Article 2(4B) of the Transparency Directive ESEF Regulation so that it refers to UKSEF 2022 v2.0.0 instead of v1.0.0.  The FCA proposes this change happens from 3 May 2022. The last business day the FCA would accept filings using UKSEF 2022 v1.0.0 would be 29 April 2022.

The deadline for comments on CP22/5 is 8 April 2022.