the article

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a curious article in its monthly “Investing in Funds & EFTs” section.  It’s by Stanford graduate Andrea Fuller, a reporter whose specialty is data analysis.  It’s about her trying to find out how much she pays for professional investment advice/management.

the outcome

As she describes it, her situation is a simple one.  She uses an investment firm that’s “one of the largest in the country,” no name though.  The bottom line for her is that she pays a yearly fee, deducted daily, of 1.40% of the assets under management, which consist entirely of ETFs and mutual funds.

The fees break out in the customary way into two parts–an overall fee, sometimes called a “wrap” fee for the service of determining an appropriate asset allocation and selecting funds/ETFs,  plus providing an interface to discuss investment issues.  In Ms. Fuller’s case, that amounts to 0.85% of the assets.  In addition, she pays an average of 0.55% per year for the portfolio construction and management of the mutual funds and ETFs she owns.

pulling teeth

What’s interesting about the story is that Ms. Fuller (1) didn’t know this information before she decided to write the story, and (2) assumed, as I would have, that the figure would be easily available with a phone call or email.  In Ms. Fuller’s case, that’s wrong.

(a longish, maybe pedantic…sorry) Note:  the article implies that all the products are “in-house,” that is, provided by a single investment firm which is also the client interface.  If so, finding out costs is straightforward–what Ms. Fuller pays in total and what she pays to the firm are the same.  If, however, the investment firm uses a third-party portfolio manager for any portfolio products, it typically demands a portion of the third party’s management fee in return for providing access to “its” client.  This means that the total fees paid consist of two parts:  the fees paid to the client-facing investment firm and amounts paid to third parties.  In my experience, investment firms are very reluctant to disclose what their fee-sharing arrangements are.  A Customer Service hotline or a plain-vanilla investment adviser would never have that information.  In that case, the answer to the fee question Ms. Fuller posed is not so simple.)

Tenaciously, Ms. Fuller made a series of phone call (and email?) attempts to get this basic information from her investment adviser.  On at least two occasions, she answer she got was wrong–and, surprise, surprise, understated fees.  Although she finally verbally received the figures I cited above, she was unable to get anything in writing.  Apparently, this basic data isn’t disclosed on the firm’s website, either.  At one point during her journey, she was told to consult Morningstar and figure the fees out herself.

My thoughts:

–Wow!

–By and large, investment firms are run by professional marketers, not professional investors.  Their emphasis is typically on cultivating a relationship that focuses on client service and peace of mind and which deemphasizes the nuts and bolts of fees and performance vs. an index or competitors’ offerings.

Still, I’ve never encountered a situation where fees haven’t been readily available and disclosed somewhere in the small print.  To me, Ms. Fuller’s firm seems to me to be either stunningly inept or to be deliberately choosing to make fee information virtually impossible to obtain.

More tomorrow.