ISI looks to continuous disclosure for funds

The Investment Savings and Insurance Association (ISI) is looking to voluntarily implement and work on some of the Capital Markets Development (CMD) Taskforce recommendations.

Wednesday, March 10th 2010, 7:15AM

The ISI had a meeting on Monday to discuss the recommendations and chief executive Vance Arkinstall says it is now looking through some issues.

"We're paying attention to the duties and responsibilities fund managers have as we're not sure we see them quite the way the Taskforce does."

The ISI is going to identify and produce a list of the duties and responsibilities it believes fund managers have for the Taskforce and regulators to make sure everyone is in agreement.

The ISI is also looking at the recommendation that entry, exit and unit pricing rules that are fair to all investors severally should be established and disclosed to investors.

The ISI believes the industry has a good record in terms of unit pricing.

"Errors occur time to time but they are quickly discovered and rectified and unit holders are not disadvantaged.

"We're looking at developing guidelines for unit pricing for ISI members."

There is also concern around the recommendation for fund managers and supervisors to explicitly disclose the duties that they owe to individual investors and any restrictions on these, where they should annually declare (e.g. in their statements to individual investors) that they have not breached their duties.

Arkinstall says the ISI believes disclosure should be continuous.

"Annual means the disclosure is only valid one day of the year and we are going to propose there should be continuous disclosure relevant to investment in funds."

Arkinstall says the ISI has also provided a Canadian example to the government of how to simplify disclosure to investors with an A4 sheet printed on both sides with key information for investors.

"We intend to go back to officials to promote that as a standard it should look to adopt," he says.