Inside Money: Invitation to disclose - fun and games with the FMC

Party pooping ASIC has warned of the dangers of 'gamification' when it comes to electronic disclosure. Photo / Thinkstock

Maybe only lawyers and regulators will celebrate day one of the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMC) era with much enthusiasm.

For everybody else in the financial industry the introduction of the full FMC means many more months, or years, of tedious compliance work.

And the targeted beneficiaries of the FMC, the investing public, probably won't notice much right away - other than longer conversations with their financial services suppliers. Most of the FMC effort has been directed at tidying up the industry itself rather than offering anything too exciting for public consumption.

But there is one tangible benefit that the FMC gifted investors on December 1: a new database of financial products with a surprisingly snappy, non-bureaucratic name.

Actually 'Disclose' is not all that tangible at the moment because it's empty of product but it does have enormous potential to improve the landscape for retail investors.

All new financial products, including equity, debt and managed funds, will have to list on Disclose as they come to market. Existing products will migrate to the register over a two-year transition period.

According to James Hartley, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MOBIE) manager of investment law, Disclose is an innovative development that will take New Zealand's financial markets "into the 21st century".

"[Disclose] is a bigger piece of the FMC than many people realise," Hartley says.

He says as well as holding digital versions of all the new short-form financial product disclosure statements (PDS), Disclose will also include a raft of extra information such as full financial statements, material contracts and other matters deemed important under a 'catch-all' provision.

Hartley says the government is currently consulting with the industry on the finer points of what Disclose discloses but the end result for investors should be a "much nicer experience" than the current paper maze.

"As the register populates we're keen to develop a search-and-compare function," he says, "which would be particularly useful for comparing managed funds, for example."

And that really would make it much easier for retail investors wanting to weigh up the merits of various financial products compared to trawling through hundreds of pages of non-standardised gobbledygook in the paper-based world.

Australia is also toying with digital enhancements to its disclosure regime - including this deal announced this week between the regulator and AMP and Vanguard - but Disclose goes further than the trans-Tasman effort.

However, a recent paper CP 224 by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on making electronic disclosure standard did include a digital warning.

"... while 'gamification' can be a good way to engage consumers and we encourage providers to explore this kind of disclosure, if a PDS incorporates a game feature that the consumer can spend an indefinite amount of time on, it may take their attention away from other important parts of the disclosure," the party-pooping ASIC says in the paper.