A global consortium of financial services companies plans to build a prototype of an XML standard for investment research based on the ecommerce language.

IRML.org (Investment Research Markup Language), which is made up of banks and brokerages including ABN AMRO, AXA, Barings Asset Management, Bloomberg and Charles Schwab, will examine several proposals for the specifications.

The group will also prototype a proof of concept, involving financial institutions publishing research content using XML, while a panel of banks that buy such reports will be set up to evaluate those feeds.

"We are currently in the process of fine-tuning a consensus schema which will be dubbed draft version 1 and be open for public comment," said Warren Sample, the consortium's director of special projects development.

Sample said the specification is being created by members worldwide. "We would foresee that where regional issues or differences exist, they would be addressed locally. But for the most part we are looking to institute a global standard, as the financial research community is global in spec and client base," he said.

A strategy working group will look at the business requirements of the standard and the strategic aspects of the organisation, while the liaison group will examine the membership of interested companies and also work with other standards groups.

The initial focus will be XML-based research content, which can then be used for customised reports, multiple product outputs from one set of data, multiple device delivery and different file format deliveries. "That is the beauty of XML - create it once, and stream out the content in a multitude of ways," said Sample.