The Investment Company Institute (ICI) has released for public review the draft taxonomy that it has developed for tagging the data in the risk/return summary that is at the front of every mutual fund prospectus. The risk/return summary contains information that is important to an investment decision, including investment objectives and strategies, costs, risks, and historical performance information.
“I applaud the ICI and its President, Paul Schott Stevens, for the leadership role they have played in bringing the potential of interactive data closer to reality for mutual fund customers,” says Christopher Cox, the Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. “Completing the taxonomy for the mutual fund risk/return summary means that funds can now make this information available to investors in far more useful ways. Interactive data will transform static figures into dynamic databases that can readily be searched, analyzed, and compared. There is no more important place for application of this tool than mutual funds, where millions of Americans engage in comparison shopping every day. Retail investors rely on mutual funds to finance their retirement, their education, their health care and almost every other need. This announcement means they will soon be armed with better, more accessible information on which to base their investment decisions. The SEC will act quickly to facilitate the use of the new taxonomy in Commission filings.”
“The ICI’s release of the draft taxonomy is a welcome development, offering the potential for tagging of prospectus information that is important to mutual fund investment decisions,” adds Andrew Donohue, the Director of the Division of Investment Management at the US Securities and Exchange Commission. “We encourage investors, members of the mutual fund industry, and other interested parties to provide their comments to the ICI during the 45-day public review period in order to assist the ICI in its efforts to create a technological tool that has the potential to enhance greatly the way in which information is provided to mutual fund investors.”