Menu of Fees

 charged by Fund Managers

 "The only thing an investor knows for certain when they buy into a fund is how much they are going to be charged."

Sarasin & Partners, a London-based asset management group, recently listed eight different ways that fund managers charge their investor clients. The list was printed in the Fund Management insert section of the Financial Times on July 21, 2014. It appears below.

1. Investment management fee
2. Performance fee
3. Charge for value added tax
4. Commission
5. In-house fee
6. Charge for investing in funds managed by third parties
7. Brokerage fee
8. Proportion of interest rate earned by cash on deposit

Sarasin commented that there may well be a degree of double charging among these fees.

What's the baseline? Vanguard, the pioneer in low cost, passive index funds, charges a fee of 0.19% on average across all its funds. This compares to an industry average of 1.08% across active fund managers.

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