Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority finds Holberg Fondsforvaltning’s fund marketing downplayed price information and notes issues corrected

The Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority has published a supervisory report on Holberg Fondsforvaltning AS covering how it presents price information for securities funds in digital marketing and information channels. The review found deficiencies in price disclosure and concluded that, overall, the firm highlighted promotional information such as nominal returns at the expense of important price information, contrary to applicable requirements and supervisory expectations. On logged-in pages, the authority found it difficult for customers to locate the price of funds they already held because pricing was not shown in the holdings overview and was only accessible via a non-prominent pathway. Pricing was described as a management fee, presented only as a percentage, and was not consistently explained as a recurring annual cost, with limited information to help investors understand the effect of costs on invested amounts and expected returns. On open pages, fund lists and prominent marketing sections focused heavily on historical returns while omitting price or presenting it less prominently than returns, with the authority reiterating expectations that price should be early, central, clearly visible and comparable, and reflect all costs and fees. Holberg confirmed that it had implemented the corrections identified during the review, and the authority took note that the deviations had been remedied on both open and logged-in websites. The firm was asked to send a copy of the report to its auditor and depositary.