Wednesday, 15 May 2013 09:37
UK rating increases to B- for experience of mutual fund investors
Morningstar has awarded the UK a B- grade for the experience of mutual fund investors from the perspective of fund shareholders.
In its Global Fund Investor Experience report, Morningstar assessed the experiences of investors in 24 countries globally.
Four categories were examined: regulation and taxation; disclosure; fees and expenses and sales and media.
The UK grade was an increase on C+ in 2011 and scored well on the dominance of open architecture distribution and choice available. It was also cited as having a "better than average" tax regime for fund investors. Fees still remained a weak spot but the firm said it expected this to improve post-RDR.
Despite this, the UK still remains below countries such as Spain, Netherlands, Denmark and China.
In the top spot was America with an A rating followed by Korea with a B+ rating while South Africa scored the worst with a D rating. This is the first time that Korea has been assessed for the study.
The study said that US investors paid significantly lower fees than their European counterparts.
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John Rekenthaler, vice president of research for Morningstar, said: "We launched the first Global Fund Investor Experience report in 2009 to examine the treatment of mutual fund shareholders in 16 countries with the goal of advancing a dialogue about best practices worldwide. Since that time we've had numerous conversations with regulators and investment companies in multiple countries about their existing policies and ways to improve.
"Working with our analysts around the world, we expanded our survey to 24 countries this year. We hope our survey findings will help investment companies, distributors, and regulatory bodies around the globe continue to focus on improving the environment for investors."
To read the full report visit http://corporate.morningstar.com/US/asp/subject.aspx?xmlfile
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In its Global Fund Investor Experience report, Morningstar assessed the experiences of investors in 24 countries globally.
Four categories were examined: regulation and taxation; disclosure; fees and expenses and sales and media.
The UK grade was an increase on C+ in 2011 and scored well on the dominance of open architecture distribution and choice available. It was also cited as having a "better than average" tax regime for fund investors. Fees still remained a weak spot but the firm said it expected this to improve post-RDR.
Despite this, the UK still remains below countries such as Spain, Netherlands, Denmark and China.
In the top spot was America with an A rating followed by Korea with a B+ rating while South Africa scored the worst with a D rating. This is the first time that Korea has been assessed for the study.
The study said that US investors paid significantly lower fees than their European counterparts.
{desktop}{/desktop}{mobile}{/mobile}
John Rekenthaler, vice president of research for Morningstar, said: "We launched the first Global Fund Investor Experience report in 2009 to examine the treatment of mutual fund shareholders in 16 countries with the goal of advancing a dialogue about best practices worldwide. Since that time we've had numerous conversations with regulators and investment companies in multiple countries about their existing policies and ways to improve.
"Working with our analysts around the world, we expanded our survey to 24 countries this year. We hope our survey findings will help investment companies, distributors, and regulatory bodies around the globe continue to focus on improving the environment for investors."
To read the full report visit http://corporate.morningstar.com/US/asp/subject.aspx?xmlfile
• Want to receive a free weekly summary of the best news stories from our website? Just go to home page and submit your name and email address. If you are already logged in you will need to log out to see the e-newsletter sign up. You can then log in again.
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