PRIIPs KID vs UCITS KIID: what changed in 2023 and what developers can extract

The UCITS KIID and the PRIIPs KID are both short, regulated disclosure documents for retail investors, but they come from different laws and present risk, performance and costs differently. Since 1 January 2023, UCITS funds sold to retail investors in the EU must provide the PRIIPs KID (Regulation (EU) 1286/2014) instead of the UCITS KIID (Directive 2009/65/EC and Regulation (EU) 583/2010). For anyone extracting data, the switch replaced a two-page document with a volatility-based SRRI and a past-performance bar chart by a three-page document with a summary risk indicator, forward-looking performance scenarios and a detailed cost table.

Two documents, two regulations

The KIID (Key Investor Information Document) was introduced by UCITS IV. Its content and layout are set by Commission Regulation (EU) 583/2010, with the risk indicator methodology in CESR guidelines (CESR/10-673). It applied only to UCITS.

The KID (Key Information Document) comes from the PRIIPs Regulation (EU) 1286/2014, which covers "packaged retail and insurance-based investment products": structured products, insurance wrappers, derivatives sold to retail, and funds. Its technical standards are in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/653, substantially amended in 2021 (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2268) ahead of the UCITS switch. PRIIPs applied from 2018, but UCITS were exempt so that they could keep the KIID; the exemption was extended twice and ended on 31 December 2022.

So for EU UCITS the timeline is: KIID from 2011/2012, PRIIPs KID from 2023. For non-UCITS retail funds and structured products, the KID has been in use since 2018. In the UK, UK UCITS continued with the UK KIID after Brexit, and the FCA is designing a successor regime for both documents.

What changed, section by section

Three of these changes matter most in practice.

The risk number is not comparable across documents

The SRRI buckets funds by realised volatility with fixed thresholds; the SRI derives a market-risk class from a VaR-equivalent volatility and then adjusts for credit risk. The thresholds differ, so the same fund often lands on a different number under the two regimes. It has been common for a broad equity fund that was SRRI 6 to be SRI 4 under PRIIPs. If your database mixes SRRI values from pre-2023 KIIDs with SRI values from current KIDs, you are comparing two scales. Store the value together with its regime, and read the SRRI and SRI explainer for the two methods.

FundFacts exposes the indicator as riskRating (1–7) and derives profile.riskBand from it (1–2 low, 3–4 medium, 5–7 high). For an EU UCITS with a current KID the number is the SRI.

Past performance left the document

The KIID's bar chart of calendar-year returns was the most-used part of the document. The PRIIPs KID replaces it with scenarios, and the 2021 amendment requires UCITS to publish past performance (and monthly-updated scenario calculations) in a separate document referenced from the "Other relevant information" section. Extraction pipelines that scraped the KIID chart now have to find that separate document, or use the factsheet. FundFacts reads calendar-year returns from the fund's published documents and NAV history rather than from the KID, and returns them as calendarReturns.years, calendarReturns.fund and calendarReturns.benchmark.

The cost table got richer

The KIID gave one "ongoing charges" percentage. The KID's composition table splits costs into entry, exit, management and other administrative or operating costs, portfolio transaction costs, and performance fees, and the "costs over time" table gives the annual cost impact (the reduction in yield) at one year and at the recommended holding period. That is a better dataset: transaction costs in particular were invisible in the KIID. The fees post explains why the headline figure and the KID total differ.

What you can extract from each document

Because both documents have a fixed, regulated layout, they extract deterministically once you know the section labels. Here is what each yields and the FundFacts field it lands in.

Performance scenarios are deliberately not part of the payload. They are model outputs that change monthly, are only defined for the PRIIPs regime, and are easy to misread as forecasts. The scenario section is still documented in the KID field guide if you want to parse it yourself.

Reading the cost fields in code

A request for any EU UCITS share class returns the KID-derived cost block as strings that keep the printed format:

python
import requests
​
r = requests.get(
    "https://fundfactsapi.com/api/v1/funds/IE00B4L5Y983",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer ffk_live_..."},
    timeout=300,  # a fund nobody has requested yet can take a few minutes
)
d = r.json()["data"]
​
print(d["riskRating"])                       # 6  (1-7)
print(d["costs"]["ongoing"])                 # "0.20%"
print(d["costs"]["transaction"])             # "0.03%" or "" when the KID does not state it
print(d["costs"]["riyRhp"])                  # annual cost impact at the recommended holding period
print(d["costs"]["recommendedHoldingPeriod"])
print(d["dataAsOf"])                         # date the figures refer to

Empty strings mean the document does not state the line, not that the cost is zero; a fund with no entry charge prints "0.00%". If the fund is not covered by the pre-built pipeline, POST /api/v1/extract (Pro and above, 5 requests per document) accepts a KID or factsheet PDF, URL or text and returns the same shape.

Practical consequences for a data model

• Version the risk indicator. Keep riskRating alongside the regime and the document date. Never average or trend a series that crosses the 2023 boundary.
• Expect three cost numbers, not one. Ongoing, transaction and RIY answer different questions. Display ongoing as the headline, keep transaction visible, and use RIY when explaining the effect of holding period.
• Do not look for past performance in the KID. Use the factsheet or the NAV series; the performance data post covers what each series means.
• UK funds are a separate case. A UK UCITS still provides a KIID with an SRRI and an ongoing charges figure; a UK-distributed PRIIP has a UK KID. Treat the country of distribution as part of the key when you store document-derived values.

The PRIIPs, KID and KIID glossary entries give the short definitions, and the field reference documents the costs group in full. To see the block for a fund you know, get a free key and request its ISIN.