Three of the mutual funds industry’s top minds debated the merits of the Do Not Call List legislation, insisting it wouldn’t affect their business, in a panel discussion, at the Investment Funds Institute of Canada’s annual conference in Toronto on Tuesday.

Starting Sept. 30, Canadians can register with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to have their phone numbers blocked from telemarketers, with the exception of political parties and charities.

However Rick Annaert, president and CEO of Manulife Securities International Ltd., said the impact of the ban to his business would be trite: “We’ve tracked this piece of business, which is generated by people making [cold] calls. It’s less than 5% of new acquisitions.”

George Aguiar, president and CEO of GP Wealth Management Corp., said businesses would learn to work around it: “[You] can still phone them up for an appointment and ask them if they’d like talk about it.”

Meanwhile, Dan Hallett, president Dan Hallett & Associates Inc., said the legislation doesn’t really change much: “I don’t think it should stop people from doing business with someone they already do business with.”

Moving on to debate the latest point-of-sale disclosure regulations, the three experts felt the proposed changes were impractical.

In the proposed legislation, the Joint Forum of Financial Market Regulators plans to make it mandatory for advisors to disclose a two page “Fund Facts” sheet summary to clients prior to making a mutual fund sale.

“If the regulatory market is too strict and doesn’t allow the industry to come up with commercially viable options, then the industry’s going to retract,” said Aguiar.

Annaert added that it’s the delivery of the document, not the disclosure of information, that’s the problem with the framework: “We are at an age now where the meetings aren’t always in an office. I don’t think they would want us making house calls with our trunk filled with 8,000 documents.”

In the face of these tighter regulations and volatile markets, the three maintained that a conservative product mix is best.

“You have to get back to basics,” Annaert said. “You can’t stop saving right now, you have to turn your money over to professional money managers, like the mutual fund world, so that when the markets do turn, that money can be deployed.”

Aguiar’s comments followed suit: “As we see the unfolding in the market, the one thing that comes to mind for me is thank god for mutual funds. What we see time and again is that assets under administration continue to grow.”