Fidelity Investments wants more disclosure. The twist here, though, is that it is Fidelity that wants to know more about what it is paying to its brokers. The Boston Behemoth recently sent a letter for the SEC outlining its complaint, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Over recent months there has been a quickening drumbeat of calls for fund firms to tell shareholders more about what they pay for distribution and other expenses. Yet, in this case Fidelity is asking the SEC to require broker-dealers to unbundle what they charge fund firms for trading securities.

The brokerages bundle both trading commissions and the cost of stock research, leaving the asset manager's unable to untangle exactly what they pay to complete a trade. It is estimated that the costs for trading run up to five cents per share on a bundled basis, or about three times the cost of executing trades on an electronic exchange.

The letter to the SEC was penned by Fidelity General Counsel Eric Roiter and David Jones. The pair wrote that "Fidelity believes that the time has come for the commission to introduce dramatic change in disclosure rules relating to soft dollars."

"The commission should consider whether to prescribe a methodology that broker-dealers must follow in computing the value of proprietary soft dollar research," Roiter and Jones added. 

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