Category Archives: paying for investment advice

paying for brokerage research

August 14, 2017 By in investment advice, Investment firms, paying for investment advice, soft dollars, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

As part of an EU overhaul of the financial industry, the UK has recently concluded an inquiry into pricing practices for mutual fund and other products offered to individual investors.  Press commentary is that the good luck for an industry with a bewildering array of prices (much higher than in the US) and little link between cost and value is not having been referred to the law enforcement authorities for criminal prosecution.

One big issue has been “soft dollars,” that is, paying brokers higher than usual commissions in return for their research, or for trading machines, or even newspapers–items that customers generally believe (and rightly suppose, in my view) they are paying for through management fees.   …but no!

Asset managers have been proclaiming that this is a weighty and complex issue, that the don’t know how to proceed.  They’ve generally been gnashing their teeth.

To me, this is all somewhat comical.  For decades, firms that do business in the US have been following an SEC mandate to keep meticulous records of the amount of their soft dollar expenses and what is being paid for.   The general rule was that if you stayed in line with industry practice, meaning doing whatever Fidelity did, you’d be ok legally.  They know exactly what they’ve been doing.  Also, the EU inquiry (see the link above) has been going on for three years.

There are two real issues:

–there’s a lot of money at stake, and

–handling the potential outcry from customers when they realize they’ve been paying twice (management fee + soft dollars) for research expenses.

An example:

A mutual fund has $50 billion in assets.  It turns those assets over at the industry average of 50% per year.  That means $50 billion in buys and $50 billion in sells.

Let’s say: the average stock trades for $40; the soft-dollar markup is $.02 per share; and the markup is taken on 20% of all shares traded (maybe slightly high, but the math is easier).

So, the fund “service” includes giving up $10 million a year of customer money on brokerage commissions in order to get the management company free goods and services.  That’s even though they’re collecting something like $250 million in management fees from the same customers.

disclosure vs. restructuring

Internally, I think disclosure is the lesser of the two issues.  The more difficult one is that industry revenues are stagnant or falling and by far the largest expense of any investment manager is salaries.  So, whose pocket does the lost soft dollar revenue come out of?

Vanguard, this decade’s Fidelity

Just prior to the 2007 financial crisis, Fidelity decided to turn up the competitive heat on fund management rivals by declaring it was unilaterally going to stop using soft dollars.  This time around, it’s silent so far.

Last week, Vanguard made a similar announcement.

 

UK investigation of the investment management industry

July 5, 2017 By in investment advice, Investment firms, paying for investment advice, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

The UK Financial Conduct Authority is wrapping up a two year investigation of the money management industry in this important global financial center.

Despite heavy industry lobbying which has squelched similar inquiries in the US, the FCA’s just-released preliminary report is an indictment of many traditional industry practices.  Excessive fees, lack of disclosure and conflicts of interest among asset managers and pension consultants are recurring themes.  The Financial Times, which seems to me to be in the best position to know, thinks that the “good” news for the industry is that the FCA has not recommended a government investigation of its practices for potential breach of UK law.

Although the investigation began before Brexit became a reality, it occurs to me that the FCA’s conclusions are being shaped by the idea that UK investment services no longer need simply meet the (very) low bar of being better than what’s available in the rest of the EU.  Without a built-in clientele, services must also be good in an absolute sense.  A regulatory regime that gives investors a fair shake is a sine qua non–as well as miles better than what is generally the case elsewhere, including in the US, the current market leader.

The FCA investigation has two implications I can see for US-based money management:

–increased disclosure of fees/performance in the UK will increase pressure for similar disclosure in the US.  One particular bone of contention is the use of “soft dollars” or “research commissions,” meaning a management company pays a broker, say, 2x the going rate for a portion of its trading.   In return it receives goods/services that the manager would otherwise have to pay for from management fees.  The kinds of stuff a manager can receive is already regulated in the US, but disclosure of the amount of money in extra commissions ultimately being paid by clients is not.  The FCA will require such disclosure in the UK.  My sense is that the amounts will be surprisingly large.

–during the years prior to the financial meltdown, US banks opened London branches to process transactions–often involving US buyers and US sellers of US products–that were allowed in the UK but illegal domestically (think:  sub-prime mortgage derivatives).  This was a result of the UK’s decision to build up its financial services industry using a “regulation lite” approach to governance.

In the absence of any changes to US laws, why wouldn’t large US institutional investors demand that their investment managers similarly conduct business out of London.  In this case, however, it would be to obtain lower fees, greater transparency and better legal recourse in the case of disputes.

Yes, this sounds a little crazy, but the legacy investment management industry–both managers and consultants–are so powerful that I think favorable change for investors is unlikely to happen otherwise.

 

 

professional investment advice (ii)

May 10, 2017 By in investment advice, Investment firms, paying for investment advice, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 3 Comments

Yesterday, I wrote about the problems a Wall Street Journal reporter had in discovering how much she paid in fees to the professionals she hired to invest her money.  The task, which we’d think should be a piece of cake, turned out to be very difficult.  Although the reporter didn’t identify the firm in question, the corporate philosophy seems to be the usual one for active managers of emphasizing service rather than fees.  This decision, which is hard to fault in itself, has been transmuted into two courses of action–bury fee information as deeply as possible, and keep the fees (1.4% of assets per year, in this case) very high, in the hope no one notices.

Oddly enough, this strategy has been relatively effective for decades.

It seems to me, though, that being aware of what one is paying for professional investment advice is only part of the assessment process.  A second important criterion is what the gains in investment performance are that come from having an investment adviser.  The relevant metric is how effective the adviser’s asset allocation and portfolio management efforts are in keeping the client at least even with the appropriate benchmark after subtracting fees.  

Andrea Fuller’s case would work out like this:

Let’s say her “moderate” asset allocation ends up being 60% stocks, 40% bonds.  If we take the returns of the S&P 500 and of some broad bond index as proxies, a rough benchmark return for her over a given period is easy to calculate.

In my view, a reasonable expectation would be that one’s portfolio should (at least) keep pace with the index after fees.  I say “reasonable” although knowing less than a quarter of active managers are able to consistently exceed my standard and over half consistently fall short.

In an ideal world, an active manager who is consistently unable to perform in line with the appropriate benchmark after fees has an easy fix–at least a partial one.  Lower fees to the point where the portfolio is at least close to the index.  Her firm’s high fee level and the teeth pulling needed to figure out what they are suggest this is the last thing on its mind.

Given that this is the case, the operative question for Andrea, and for anyone else, is how much the service the firm may be providing–like determining asset allocation or the availability of a knowledgeable account executive to answer questions or handholding during crises–is worth in terms of losses to an index fund strategy that one could easily implement on one’s own.

It also seems to me that if annual returns consistently fall more than 1% below a benchmark after fees it’s worth the time to shop around for a different investment management firm.

 

how much does professional investment advice cost?

May 9, 2017 By in investment advice, Investment firms, paying for investment advice, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

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.