Asset Management Charges Investigation

Asset Management Charges Investigation.

We have long expressed concerns about hidden and opaque management charges for fund management, asset management and discretionary asset management.

The finance industry regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has made great strides to improve the transparency of financial company charging. Even to the point that most fund managers now have to detail charges with clean fund charges and separate their own charges as well as financial advisers who, via the back door, were getting paid hidden ongoing advice charges, usually expressed as a %, without having to disclose/agree this with you. Thankfully, this changes in 2016, where adviser % charges that have not been agreed with you since April 2013, will stop.

Finally, the asset management industry is now in focus. The FCA is now focusing again on bundled charges for asset management firms to ensure that transparency becomes the normal function by unbundling those charges so that you, I and other investors, be it companies, institutions and others can easily compare.

The FCA wants to focus on ensuring that not just traditional insurance funds, pension funds and ISA funds are clear, fair and easy to compare, but asset management firms who handle more specialist type investment accounts and funds such as gold, exchange traded funds and more also have clearly identifiable charges.

The FCA want, and we believe it will, encourage competition and drive charges down.