We regularly review the additional expenses for our funds as part of our commitment to provide a clear indication of costs to our customers. As a result of this review, we’re updating the additional expenses we show on factsheets, fund lists and illustrations for a number of our funds.
What are additional expenses?
These are the expenses of running the underlying fund over the last annual reporting period, such as audit fees, administration fees etc. These expenses are paid to the fund manager and can vary from annually. These are in addition to the annual management charge (AMC). Together, they form part of the ‘Total Charge’ for pension and life funds.
Although we know the AMC in advance, we don’t know what the day-to-day expenses will be as these fluctuate daily and we can only estimate what they will be in the future.
However, expenses are automatically deducted from the funds daily and the daily unit price reflects this along with any gains or losses made. This is what determines the value of a customer’s policy. This means that, regardless of the charges we disclose on fund factsheets and fund lists, customers are charged the correct amount.
How do we work out the fund charges we show (disclose)?
Every year we contact all external fund managers to ask them to provide details of the additional expenses incurred by the fund over the previous year. We then compare these with the expenses we disclosed the previous year and then round to the nearest 0.01%.
Where do we show (disclose) the fund charges?
These are shown on our fund prices and performance pages, our fund factsheets and illustrations. These are the charges we disclose, which may differ slightly from the charges customers are actually paying day-to-day as expenses fluctuate.
You can see our revised disclosed charges in the PDFs below. They’re split out into separate documents for our pension and life fund ranges. Please note that the total we show excludes any product or adviser charge.
The changes in more detail:
Pension funds - annual review of expenses
Life funds - annual review of expenses