Under the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMCA), managers must include a risk indicator to make it clear to investors how volatile a particular fund is. The risk indicator runs on a scale of one, indicating very low risk, through to seven.

It is calculated on the basis of the previous five years' returns, based on annualised standard deviations. The more the actual weekly or monthly return differs from the average, the higher the standard deviation and the higher the volatility.

The risk indicator model is used through Europe.

But Richard James, of NZ Funds, said he was advocating for New Zealand fund managers to use a stress testing model instead.

"I think the [risk indicators] are problematic and backward-looking over a relatively short period of time. Risk is by nature episodic."

He said it was possible that in some cases no volatility would be reflected in the indicator for quite risky products.

A better model was to put together a portfolio and test it against major financial events of the past 30 or 40 years, he said. That would enable managers and advisers to tell clients what those events would have meant for their portfolios in terms of dollars and percentage loss and the time it would take to recover.

"Even the more sophisticated investors are not clear what standard deviation is. They don't care about volatility. They care about losing money and what it would take to recover. Standard deviation doesn't give a sense of that."

He said while it was comforting to follow global guidelines, there was an opportunity to do something cleverer in New Zealand.

John Berry, of Pathfinder Asset Management, agreed there were problems with the system. "I think the wider issue is that what is called a risk indicator measures volatility which is not how most investors define risk. Most investors think of risk as 'what is the probability of me getting my capital back?'"

He said the risk indicator measure could be misunderstood or wrongly interpreted by clients.