Mercer has made digital history becoming the first managed investment scheme to publish on the new Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) ‘Disclose’ website.
Disclose was designed as the document portal for all financial products and licensed under the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMC). The site has two registers – schemes and offers – with the former recording managed investment schemes (MIS) and managed funds information and the latter a repository for all financial product information (including debt and equity securities, derivatives and managed investment products).
While the ‘offers’ register to date has been populated by just shy of 200 products – mainly Australian-based issues offered under the trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Agreement – the ‘schemes’ register was empty until last week.
Before filing scheme documents on Disclose, providers must be registered with the Financial Markets Authority as an MIS manager. While Mercer was the first MIS to upload scheme documents to Disclose, Tauranga-based non-bank First Mortgage Managers also registered scheme information last week.
As well as providing a centralised store of all official MIS documents, Disclose also includes relevant details such as scheme trustee and custodian.
James Hartley, MBIE head of financial markets policy, said the department was working on a new “consumer-friendly” investor portal for Disclose, enabling better search and compare functions.
Hartley said MBIE hoped to have the new front-end up and running next year.
He said other elements of the new FMC disclosure regime appear to be working as planned.
“We’re pleased to see CBL Insurance has kept its product disclosure statement to just 53 pages – down from the usual 250-odd pages IPO documents typically were [before the FMC],” Hartley said.
Under the FMC, the product disclosure statement (PDS) replaces the old-school prospectus.
Auckland-based credit insurance firm CBL is looking to raise about $130 million in a dual NZX/ASX listing.
According to Hartley, MBIE’s review of the Financial Advisers Act (FAA) is also progressing well.
He said the FAA review has attracted about 160 industry submissions and a further 250 from consumers. The FAA submissions should be published in about a month or so.