Data Point Modelling (DPM)

What is DPM? 

Data Point Modelling (DPM) is a data-centric methodology (defined by ISO 5116) designed to organize business terms and concepts, facilitating a clear, business-friendly representation of data requirements derived from legal mandates. It comprises two core components:​  

• DPM Dictionary: A comprehensive list of business terms structured into hierarchies, providing definitions and unique technical codes.​  
• Annotated Templates: Tabular representations that combine coded terms and dimensions to depict specific data points in reporting templates.​  

This approach ensures a precise, complete, and unambiguous definition of terms and concepts, enabling the creation of logical structures for information requirements that are understandable to both business and technical users.

DPM and XBRL in EU financial supervision

European supervisory authorities such as the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) have been using DPM in conjunction with the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) data standard for more than a decade to collect consistent, high-quality data from financial institutions across the EU. The integration of DPM with XBRL taxonomies ensures that the metadata defined in the DPM is effectively utilized in the tagging and validation of reported data.

The frameworks underpin critical reporting regimes like the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) for banks and Solvency II for insurers, and others. To maintain high-quality services in this area, authorities are focused on automating taxonomy production, minimizing errors, and reducing the impact of business and technical changes in reporting implementation. For instance, since October 2022, EIOPA has been using ATOME Matter (now Regnology Metadata Modeller), a collaborative metadata management and modelling tool, to support taxonomy development.

National Competent Authorities (NCAs), in their turn, collect XBRL reports generated from DPM-based templates, validate them using certified XBRL engines, and forward the data to central bodies like the EBA and the European Central Bank (ECB). 

This results in a unified dataset that supports EU-wide supervision and risk monitoring while accommodating the diversity of local IT systems used by individual institutions.

This approach has proven effective in delivering accurate, standardized data at scale. The use of DPM ensures clarity and deduplication in the definition of supervisory requirements, while XBRL enables reliable data exchange and automated validation. As a result, authorities have been able to reduce manual processing, improve transparency in regulatory expectations, and enable robust, comparative analysis across jurisdictions.

However, recent developments under the EBA’s ‘DPM Refit’—including the introduction of internal DPM identifiers in the new xBRL-CSV format—are reshaping the roles of DPM and XBRL. Both regulators and financial institutions are actively preparing for these changes, which aim to modernize the reporting framework while ensuring its long-term consistency and maintainability across the EU.

The evolution to DPM Standard 2.0 represents a significant advancement in the European regulatory reporting framework. Initiated as the ‘DPM Refit’ by the EBA and EIOPA, this update addresses the growing complexity, volume, and granularity of financial data.  

The primary objectives of DPM 2.0 are to enhance flexibility, harmonize reporting across sectors, and improve overall efficiency in the reporting lifecycle. Key improvements include a redesigned metamodel that offers more precise data structure definitions and a modular architecture better aligned with supervisory requirements. It also formalizes a separate layer for validation rules, distinguishing business logic checks from structural definitions—an important shift for clarity and reuse.

A notable technical change is the shift to the XBRL-CSV format, which greatly reduces file size and processing load compared to the legacy XBRL-XML format, making large-scale data submissions more manageable. For the first time, the EBA is also proposing to expose its internal DPM identifiers directly in the taxonomy, raising questions about transparency and usability.

The full implementation of DPM 2.0 is targeted for December 2025, with the aim of streamlining supervisory reporting, easing the compliance burden, and enhancing data quality and consistency across the EU financial system. By this time, banks must implement necessary system adjustments in time to ensure compliance with the new reporting format.

• More flexible support for a wider variety of needs, whether it's collecting statistics, tracking transactions, or managing key business information.
• Improved business rules language used for checks and calculations, making it clearer, more powerful, and easier to standardize.
• A unified method developed by EBA and EIOPA that can be used freely and is based on an international standard (ISO 5116).
• More consistent ways of defining reporting requirements, using the same methods, processes, and tools across the board.

• Full coverage of the reporting journey—from defining the data and managing its details to exploring and understanding it. It also tracks how the data is connected and where it originally came from.
• Better ability to combine different types of data, even if they use different formats or levels of detail.
• A version history of the data glossary to keep track of changes over time and help integrate new terms more accurately.
• A simpler, more efficient reporting process by cutting down on complexity, repeated work, and unnecessary information.