Fees, Cost and Transparency – 
Latest Developments & Practical Considerations

 

Date: 
March 25, 2020 

Venue: 
Cass Business School

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Delegate Fee:

Free to Trustees and Pension Executives

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Purpose: 

In a low return environment, understanding and controlling costs and fees is essential, but how can pension funds and trustees ensure they have all the information they need to make the critical cost vs value judgement of their investments. Furthermore, with increased regulatory focus on costs, fees and transparency, in particular with recent FCA and tpr initiatives on assessing value for members for both DB and DC schemes, just how should this be done in practice? The industry has designed the Cost transparency Initiative and we will discuss this in more detail and the practical considerations for schemes are they aim to improve their overall understanding of costs and charges. With the CMA review highlighting the need to evaluate investment consultants and fiduciary managers, should schemes look to access their value in money?

 

Our panel of distinguished speakers will consider some of the issues below:

 

• What exactly is the Cost Transparency Initiative, and will it actually deliver on its goals? 

•  Can you actually get the data needed from your managers to assess value for members effectively? 

•  How should any benchmarking of your own scheme, relative to others in terms of overall costs, be done? 

•  Do pension funds focus too much on explicit costs such as disclosed/declared asset management fees and not enough on the ‘hidden cost’ of investing? 

•  What does the industry need to do to further improve transparency? 

•  How can pension funds ensure that returns are not reduced unnecessarily by costs and high fees? 

•  What strategies can trustees and employers use to help them identify, benchmark, monitor, manage and understand both visible and ‘hidden’ operational and administration costs? 

•  Does the focus on costs naturally lead to passive/low cost investment strategies or is there still room for high alpha and possibly less cost transparent strategies? 

• How can trustees better understand the costs and charges across all their services including consulting and administration?

• What impact will this increased focus on cost and fees have on the asset management industry and different strategies offered by fund managers?

 

Key Speakers to date: