Prospectus

A fund prospectus is the legal document under which a fund offers its shares or units. For a UCITS it is approved by the regulator of the fund's domicile and typically runs to well over a hundred pages, covering the investment objective and policy, permitted instruments and limits, risk factors, fee structure, dealing frequency and cut-off times, valuation rules, share classes and the names of the management company, depositary, administrator and auditor.

Umbrella funds usually publish one main prospectus plus a supplement per sub-fund, and updates are issued whenever a material term changes or a new share class launches.

Why it matters

The prospectus is the source of truth. Marketing factsheets and KIDs summarise it, but details such as whether swing pricing applies, how a hedged share class hedges, what the maximum management fee is or which benchmark the fund is measured against are only fully defined here. When a factsheet and the prospectus disagree, the prospectus governs. For compliance and suitability work it is the document a reviewer will eventually ask for.

In the API

FundFacts API does not return the prospectus text, but several fields are read from the disclosures it defines: the stated objective, legal structure, share class and manager.

json
{
  "investmentObjective": "Seeks to track the performance of an index composed of developed market equities.",
  "structure": "UCITS ETF",
  "shareClass": "USD (Acc)",
  "keyFacts": { "manager": "Example Asset Management" }
}

Example values, paraphrased. Use the factsheet and KID entries for the summary documents most fields come from.

Common pitfalls

• Prospectus fee tables show maximum fees; the actual charge appears in the KID or factsheet as ongoing charges.
• A supplement can be newer than the main prospectus. Check both dates.