How can this be?

Most fund managers pay an ongoing annual fee known as ‘trail commission’ typically 0.5% of the fund value to the sales agent who sold you the fund.

This sales agent may have been a bank, building society, insurance company, discount broker or an IFA and you may or may not be getting any ongoing service or help from them. The agent may no longer exist. They may have gone out of business or have been bought by another firm.

This commission is very difficult to avoid and fund managers will only pay it to authorised agents and if one does not exists for your account, they keep it for themselves!

They won’t generally pay it back to you even if you are no longer in contact with the agent who sold you the fund.

When you rate investment funds with Moneyspider you simply authorise your fund manager to pay this ongoing commission to us in future. This income allows us to provide you with;

• an online fund valuation updated daily
• a monthly email valuation of your funds
• with each valuation showing you your funds recent investment performance and the Moneyspider ratings on each of your funds so you can keep track of their performance
• each month we show you the current top rated investment funds both overall and in the areas you are invested in so that you can see how your investment funds compare and what funds are doing well

This is incredibly valuable information if you want to keep your funds optimally invested. Not all fund managers perform well, some are consistently bad, a small number deliver consistently good returns, the difference between the best and the worst investment funds over long periods will amount to very big differences in the investment returns received.

The decision to switch funds is down to you, but we will give you the information you need to make informed decisions and when you have made up your mind you can instruct Moneyspider and we organise the switch for you.