Mark Fawcett, chair of the Advisory Board and chief investment officer at state-backed auto-enrolment pension firm NEST, said in the interim report:
“We believe it is important to stress that we consider the primary clients of the disclosure of costs to be governing bodies such as trustee boards and [independent governing committees] rather than individual members; bearing in mind that cost is merely one element, albeit a very important one, to the understanding of the value of fund management services.
“However we also believe the industry is on a journey towards improved transparency and we will be encouraging the IA to ultimately work on an approach to cost disclosure for members and individual investors.”
The Advisory Board, which also includes consumer representatives, warned challenges remain before even professional fund investors can be confident the IA’s new framework is reliable.
“The code is important in ensuring comparability and consistency of data, across time and between schemes and providers, and the role of the code will be seriously undermined if it cannot deliver that consistency,” said Fawcett.
