CHICAGO—The last few years have seen the creation of more stringent rules for the financial world, and recent decisions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies means that real estate investment trusts will soon have to change the way they do business.

The commission recently approved FINRA's proposal that, starting next year, requires “general securities members to provide more accurate per share estimated values on customer account statements,” among other changes. Instead of simply using the offering price, typically $10 per share, as the per share estimated value during the offering period, statements will have to reflect both the various costs and fees incurred and if the underlying assets have decreased in value.

"The fear is that there is going to be a backlash from investors," who may fear they are losing money, Tom Voekler, president of the Alternative & Direct Investment Securities Association and co-founder and co-managing partner of law firm Kaplan Voekler Cunningham & Frank PLC, tells GlobeSt.com. ADISA, formerly known as REISA, attracted about 500 industry professionals to its recent Spring Symposium in New Orleans, where they tackled these and other subjects.

“There is now a resignation that this is a final rule,” he adds. “There is no longer anything the industry can do” except to begin planning for next April when it takes effect.  

It's not as if the industry did not have any impact on the changes originally put forward by FINRA, he adds. “It was a fairly onerous proposal at the outset,” and which would have required more frequent appraisals of assets. What ADISA members struggled with was to find “the middle ground between what is onerous for the industry and what is valuable information for investors.”

By the end of last month's conference, what Voekler found most surprising was that “people haven't really started worrying about what they will do” to make sure the new rules are implemented correctly. “The steam has been spent on trying to change them.” But now the challenge is to educate investors who will be getting these statements that their investments haven't changed, “it's just how they are reflected on your account statements.”

In about six months, ADISA will hold its next national conference in Las Vegas, and Voekler hopes that by then people in the industry will have made progress toward deciding whether or not to have an industry standard or if each sponsor will do it alone.

“We've been fighting this fight for many years,” but now “it's necessary to figure out what we're going to do.”