ASIC today announced a joint industry project to develop innovative, digital financial product disclosure that aims to boost investors' understanding of financial products.

This is part of ASIC's broader work in promoting digitisation and new media to help engage investors.

ASIC will work with product providers AMP and Vanguard to develop and user-test a short, online 'key facts' sheet and a self-assessment tool to guide investor understanding.

ASIC Chairman Greg Medcraft said technology was integral to improving the effectiveness of disclosure.

‘We want investors to have trust and confidence in our financial system and part of that is for ASIC to explore new ways for investors to get to grips with their investments,’ Mr Medcraft said.

‘We encourage industry to harness the opportunities of digitisation. More and more, people are accessing financial products and making decisions using mobile devices.

‘More work needs to be done on short disclosure. Investors tend to turn off when faced with wordy disclosure documents. If they need more detail, investors can access further layers of information from product providers online.’

Product providers could also present information in interactive or video form and offer online tools for investors to assess their understanding of a product.

Mr Medcraft said, ‘ASIC acknowledges AMP and Vanguard in taking this first step. We will use the findings from the project to inform our broader work on digital disclosure.’

Preliminary results are expected by mid-2015.

This project complements ASIC’s recently announced proposals to further promote digital disclosure (refer: 14-303MR).

As part of the project, ASIC may also work with other product providers in future.