The Financial Markets Authority, Commission for Financial Capability and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment are working on a project that could lead to some fund managers being required to change the way they disclose fees.

MBIE financial markets manager James Hartley said the Commerce Minister had commissioned work on annual statement reporting of KiwiSaver, superannuation and workplace savings schemes earlier in the year.

“The annual statement work focuses on making KiwiSaver statements easier to read and gives us an opportunity to consider ways we can ensure banks and fund managers make clear and easy to interpret disclosure information available to consumers.”

The work is being led by MBIE. It proposes that annual statements should include a projected retirement balance and income figures, and the total fees the investor has paid in dollars.

At the moment, most report on fees as a percentage.

MBIE is finalising a document for consultation about implementing the changes.

But there are concerns that it could be hard to implement, particularly for big providers with a range of diversified and outsourced products.

Grant Hodder, head of product, funds and private bank, at ANZ, said he was supportive of transparency. But the transition might not be straightforward.

“Providers will need to build an engine to calculate the fees in dollar terms for members and then feed that into the annual statement information so this will take some time,” he said.

“Any calculations will also need to account for members who have sums of money spread across different funds within a KiwiSaver scheme.  And before anyone can start we need to agree on details – for example whether to calculate on an average balance for the year or end-of-year balance.    It is all achievable but there is a bit in it so will take some time to build.”

One fund manager who did not want to be named said each provider would have to calculate the fees at a client level, across thousands of people.  “Doing it at an individual client level would add a lot of cost that the client might end up paying for possibly for little additional benefit.”

George Carter, of Nikko, agreed there was more to think about. “Often for retail investors the fund management fee is just one aspect of the total fee.  For this to be effective, it would be necessary to get a total fee picture which would require inclusion of platform fees, advice fees as well.  Otherwise, if the focus is on just one area things have a habit of migrating to other less well-disclosed areas."