Semantic Ontologies and Financial Reporting: An Application of the FIBO

This paper illustrates the application of a developed global fund reporting ontology (GFRO) for efficient financial reporting. The GFRO extends Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO). Existing reporting financial information systems lack the ability to integrate data from heterogenic sources and provide unified and consistent financial reports that will comply with regulations. This study reveals that by integrating the power of XSLT and Semantic Web technologies, operationalised through the development of a scalable working prototype, allows financial services industry experts to build more flexible and consistent reports. Our research shows that the consistency of financial reports can be dramatically improved by using an appropriate inference engine.