Fees come to the fore

Investment trust charges continue to fall, according to AIC research, but will this drive demand across the sector?

As volatility continues to grip the market, investment charges can feel all too pronounced, eating up total returns. However, despite fund fees reportedly rising over recent years, research from the AIC, with statistics from Lipper, suggests the investment companies (excluding VCTs) have on average dropped charges for the third consecutive year. Excluding performance-related fees, the average total expense ratio (TER) of a conventional investment company is 1.44%. Two years ago the figure was 1.6% and 1.55% last year. The number of investment companies with TERs below 1% has also increase...