[Weekly wrap] Apples v apples

People in the fund management industry have been calling for 'apples v apples' comparisons for some time and the government has announced it will be introducing standardised reporting requirements for KiwiSaver.

This is a welcome development and it is likely these new standards will be applied to the whole industry at some point in the near future.  Transparency and disclosure are areas where New Zealand's fund management sector often gets marked down, and opaque reporting benefits those who are less than upfront with investors about their performance.

However, the government must also avoid going overboard with the amount of disclosure required, otherwise investment reports could end up overly long and complicated, making investors less likely to bother reading them.  This is the fate that has befallen prospectuses, which tend to be ignored in favour of investment statements.

The changes were announced in yesterday's Budget, in which the government also announced the delay of KiwiSaver auto-enrolment.  This move has been labelled "disappointing" by Mercer.