DRAFT proposals published by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to regularise the sale of investment products are stringent, covering information disclosure and risk assessment for clients. The onus placed on financial institutions and their sales staff to observe operating regulations, on pain of legal sanction, could even impede growth of the fastest evolving segment of retail finance. But the safeguards are necessary - absolutely. The tightening will fulfil the express wish of investors, soured by the experience of investing in the dark, that banks and brokerages be made to discharge fully a vendor's responsibility to go with the scope for immense profitability in the investments which they design or spew out as associate parties to the product originators.
Last year's eruption of investor anger over product misrepresentation in all the main financial centres, East and West, showed that no one country's investors were more savvy or less so than others. They had operated under a collective misimpression that the range of structured notes, unit trusts and derivatives they bought (or had foisted on them) were 'suitable' and 'safe'. Singapore should yield to no jurisdiction in its regulatory zeal to deal with the risks posed by mis-selling of products and of their suitability for different categories of investors.
A word of caution: Regulatory cautions can be parsed or interpreted too broadly by vendors. As an example, the risks summary to give clients an overview of suitability, called the product highlights sheet, would be worthless if written in dense officialese or couched in generalities that provide little information. This is a big-print primer meant to be read and comprehended, not a small-print compliance meant to deter but taken as read. Caveat emptor, or 'buyer beware', never suffered a worse case of disrepute through the years of fine-print abuse in prospectuses. MAS must be on guard. The same principle should drive the product risk-rating and 'professional advice' that is to be given before 'complex instruments' are sold.
Properly implemented, the restrictions amount to fomenting a cultural revolution in the transparent way banks and brokerages will sell paper, and in how investors educate themselves and get educated in the intricacies of investing. No longer tolerated will be the old habit of bank staff cutting corners and using subterfuge to meet sales targets set by unreasonable management. It will take some time for the banks and their workers to develop a culture of responsible selling. The task cannot start soon enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment