The Institutional Disclosure Working Group (IDWG) was launched as part of the FCA’s Asset Management Market Study remedies package. The FCA believes that a standardised disclosure template should provide institutional investors with a clearer understanding of the costs and charges for a given fund or mandate. This should allow investors to compare charges between providers and give them a clear expectation of the disclosure they can expect. The IDWG was tasked with agreeing a template.
On 5 July 2018, the FCA updated its web page on the IDWG stating that recommendations had been made concerning:
- templates for data collection and disclosure;
- what arrangements need to be in place to ensure the templates are maintained;
- how to encourage providers to offer information using the template; and
- how to encourage more users to request information in this format from their providers.
A summary of a report concerning the IDWG’s recommendations has been published together with an FCA response. However, the FCA states that the full report, including the templates themselves, will be released in full “once a new body or group is convened in Autumn 2018 to curate and update the framework as needed in the future”.