IFSA multi-media document engages attention

The Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) has rolled out a multi-media disclosure document in a bid to develop a best-practice model for fund man-agers using e-commerce.

The Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) has rolled out a multi-media disclosure document in a bid to develop a best-practice model for fund man-agers using e-commerce.

The model was presented at the Australian Security and Investment Commission (ASIC) conference on e-commerce held in Sydney yesterday by IFSA chief Lynn Ralph.

Ralph says the presentation of the group’s effort in drawing together the best methods to present disclosure documents electronically had excited a lot of interest from fund managers.

“The disclosure document helped us develop a shopping list of the sorts of issues an e-commerce best practice debate should tackle,” Ralph says.

“For example, is a multi-media document more seductive than a paper version and more likely to need a warning?”

She says regulators currently take a “media neutral” approach to policy develop-ment where the same principles apply to multi-media documents as paper ones.

The IFSA sample document includes live video footage and guidance through the process of selecting a fund to invest in with the option of purchasing on-line.

Those accessing the document are also given the option to “call a human” at any time for further advice.

Ralph says multi-media documents offer a lot more scope to engage and interact with clients than current paper versions do.

“I think our multi-media demonstration showed how client’s have to interact and engage with the document,” Ralph says.

“There’s much more chance in the multi-media environment than with a paper document that a customer will come out informed.”

However, Ralph says as far as she is aware no fund managers have currently adopted such multi-media documents for commercial use.

She says there are a number of technical issues still to be addressed such as the slow video down-load speed on the internet.

“Even with proper band-width there would still be a problem as the quality de-pends on the PC of the consumer at home.”

Ralph suggests this could be solved by providing clients with the document in CD format that could be updated over the internet.

“Even if this isn’t cheaper than producing paper documents I would go ahead with it as the CD would create more attention and lead to better informed investors.”