It’s no secret that passive investments, such as exchange-traded and indexed funds, have become more popular with investors over the past 10 years. Such funds require very little to no intervention by investment managers and, therefore, have much lower management fees than the classic mutual fund structure. Read: Continued growth predicted as ETF industry tops $100 billion […]
Amidst all of the talk about transparency in the investment industry, the dialogue around refundable fees has been on the quiet side. Also known as symmetric fees, they go up when the performance is good and down when it’s bad. Take a manager earning a fixed fee of 0.65 per cent with a symmetric component […]
Meeting plan members’ retirement goals (29 per cent) and managing litigation risk (25 per cent) are the top factors driving defined contribution pension plan sponsor decision-making, according to new research by global investment manager PIMCO. The annual research surveyed nearly 70 defined contribution consultants and advisors providing services to more than 12,000 plan sponsors in […]
When Britain’s former economic watchdog, the Office of Fair Trading, published a report in 2013 about the country’s workplace defined contribution pension market, it was the latest call in the country’s ongoing conversation about pension governance and delivering value for money to plan members. The report estimated more than 186,000 pension plans in the country […]
Nearly half (46%) of full-time employed U.S. baby boomers mistakenly believe that they don’t pay any fees in their retirement accounts.
Investment management fees are often structured in ways that reward asset managers in good times but spare them pain when they underperform, say many Canadian DB pension fund managers and investment consultants. They also argue that, although some fees for institutional investors have declined, they remain too high in general—and don’t always reflect great manager skill.
State pension systems that pay the most for money management get some of the worst investment returns and could reduce costs by indexing, according to a study.
The dynamics of supply and demand have caused asset management fees in alternatives to drop, Mercer’s 2012 Global Asset Manager Fee Survey has found.
For many plan sponsors, there is no time like the present to assess how they are directing their efforts—especially when it comes to fees and performance. These aspects of plan management have always been on the minds of plan sponsors. However, the Great Recession, which took a severe toll on DB and DC assets, has […]
Reader Alert: This is Part One in a Two Part series. The higher you climb the harder the fall. It’s a lesson from the 1970s that many gold bugs should heed. Back then, after soaring to record highs, the yellow metal fell almost 70% in a jump-off-the-cliff drop. Little surprise then that the frighteningly parabolic […]