(February 29 – 08:30 ET) – At long last the Investment Dealers Association has a Web site, at www.ida.ca.
Launched with little fanfare and no announcement to date, the IDA’s site is now open for business. The site includes background on just what the IDA is and what it does (both as a self-regulator and a trade association). Industry issues, publications and research reports, membership information (including downloadable application forms in PDF format), the entire IDA rulebook, regulatory policies and bulletins are available too.
The IDA site is long overdue. At the IDA’s annual conference last June, IDA members were lambasted by a luncheon speaker for their slow progress onto the Internet, yet the IDA has been a real online laggard itself. Its rival the Investment Funds Institute of Canada has had a site for some time, as has the upstart Mutual Fund Dealers Association (a joint venture of IFIC and the IDA. The Alberta and Manitoba securities commissions recently joined B.C., Ontario and Quebec in launching some useful industry sites. Ontario’s Financial Services Commission recently announced a redesigned site on the insurance and pension side.
The IDA has been promising a site since last summer. To date its only online offering, a site for the bond transparency project, CanPx Corp., has been a rather dismal affair. The new site is packed with information, available in both French and English.