Lawrence Carrel
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox implored the mutual fund industry Thursday to quickly join the "war against complexity" and improve the information investors rely on to evaluate their funds by making it interactive and easier to understand.
As the keynote speaker at the Investment Company Institute's 49th annual general membership meeting, Cox said the ICI, the fund industry's trade association, was playing a critical role in meeting this challenge. "You are on the threshold of a revolution on how investors acquire data," said Cox, adding that the SEC was also taking steps to improve the information it offers. "The goal is to make mutual fund comparisons easier for investors." Cox said some of these tools exist today but that they rely on static content, which can be more costly and less reliable than that offered in interactive environments. He said investors will soon find interactive data indispensable for running their financial lives, and this info needs to be more accessible and easily understood to fulfill their needs. But whether the mutual fund industry will embrace a technology that easily allows investors to compare fees and returns on investments -- especially if the comparisons don't work in their favor -- remains to be seen. The chairman demonstrated on the agency's own Edgar Web site the difficulties in gathering information for valid comparisons, then demonstrated potential changes the SEC might implement to make the process less cumbersome.
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