Article
New Eyes, Bold Ideas: Shaking Up Performance Disclosures
March 27, 2025
You may have noticed that Life Moments recently collaborated with TISA, EY-Seren, and Vanguard on research about improving fund performance disclosures. This research shed light on how current standards fail customers and allowed us to reimagine a new approach that prioritises customer needs. To truly rethink what disclosure looks and feels like, we started from the ground up. Who better to lead that than two colleagues new to investing, Prashanthi Balachander and Daphne Toprek?
As a firm, we pride ourselves on the diversity in our backgrounds. While we’re a FinTech, the majority of our team members do not have a background in finance, but come from industries like healthcare, fashion, and media. This gives us a unique perspective, unshackled by industry dogmas and attuned to real customer needs. Financial services often assumes customers understand its language, making decisions over their heads. We challenge that.
A fresh perspective
Before this project, Prashanthi and Daphne had never seen a fund performance disclosure. Like many consumers, they found them jargon-heavy and confusing. So, they unraveled the words, format, and context. Then, the ideation started- what would it take to make them understand what is being communicated? Prashanthi subsequently reimagined what performance disclosure could look like, using trusted Life Moments tools and features for engagement and education, as well as adapting and enhancing them for the purpose of disclosure.
All the while, there was one big question that industry insiders do not often ask themselves about their practices- Why?
Why are disclosures designed this way? Why is the language so complex? Why can’t it be changed?
From a consumer perspective, much of the industry’s decisions, fuelled by both both the regulator and firms, make little sense. They make communications harder to understand and discourage engagement.
The future is now
Our reimagined version had both simple and more advanced tweaks to current performance disclosures. The research has proven that these tweaks work. It shows that there is real consumer need for firms to innovate with these outdated and complex methods of communication. In this digital age, there is so much we can do, if we dare to innovate.
The Financial Conduct Authority is not stopping this- if anything, they are trying to motivate the industry to get moving, as consumers expectations are growing with the wide availability of technology such as AI.
Life Moments CEO Ben Leonard says:
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that regulatory and innovation agendas are closely aligned in Financial Services. From better customer outcomes, to the role of data and the use of AI we believe that regulation can drive innovation if firms approach in the right way. The AI Lab, Targeted Support sprints and engagement in our recent Disclosure work suggest to us that regulation is not a barrier, it’s an enabler. We are in a race against rapidly changing consumer behaviour trends, as evidenced in the pace of adoption of ChatGPT. It’s time for us all to move faster, together."
