Financial Advice professional development manager Leigh Hodgetts says public information had to be easily available in just one hit.

“People should not have to go through three different clicks to find information, because that is not very helpful,” she said.

Nor should customers have to scroll right to the bottom of a page to find out what they need to know. 

“If consumers don't know much about (financial advice) they need to be able to find stuff quite readily.”

Hodgetts said this position had been supported by the Financial Markets Authority. “They are looking for clear wording, consumer friendly material, just the one click.”

Ethical Investing NZ director Peter Lee said one way to do this when there was a range of information was to have a basic document that could be easily expanded out so more details can be accessed. 

Tony Lane, the chief risk officer from Squirrel, said his group had done a re-design of its website because it had not been as easy as it should have been for the customer.

“I do like (the new website) - in customer language, people know where to go.”

When it came to disclosing information to a potential client this could be made in many formats, such as by email or in a personal meeting with a would-be client.

Lane said when it was done in a personal meeting it was important to take notes to have a clear record of what took place.

Information from that and subsequent encounters were kept on a portal, so everything was on record and was easy to find. 

Lee added a complication, saying for his firm, disclosure was as much an art as a science.  

“You wind up dealing with clients’ hopes, dreams and so on, so the conversations can be all over the place,” he said. 

“Initially it is almost always a phone call….and this is purely to see what customers are looking for, and then we try to schedule a personal or a Zoom meeting, and that is where we start to get into things in a little bit more depth.”

Lee said meetings were usually not recorded, but there would usually be two or more advisers at each meeting because advisers could sometimes have a different interpretation of language. After further discussion, a summary would be sent out to the client with a clear understanding of the situation and what the likely costs would be.

“That way, a client will know exactly what we have got.”

Hodgetts said in her experience advisers very often handled their disclosure obligations well.  

She the key requirements for advisers included:

• Having a user-friendly website
• Making sure clients have received the disclosure they are entitled to
• Making sure that disclosure is recorded
• Making the most of technological aids.