Why are unit trust providers still so bent on having high fees?

Easier to earn money from fees than investment returns

Hi Gabriel,

Can I understand what you mean by high fees?

Transactionally, you can find zero sales charge, zero platform fees and zero switching fees solution here.

If you're talking about management fees, remember that ETFs have management fees as well, although they are lower than UTs in general, but never forget the job scope of the ETF manager is basically to buy holdings that replicate the ETF.....and that's it....

A UT manager does not just buy holdings based off a benchmark, but their goal is and always has been to deliver market beating returns, which again, not all UTs can do. They do have a team of analysts and the like to support the operation, so that has to be costed in somewhere. After all, if you are trying to beat the benchmark, then you can't just buy the benchmark, you need to adjust the allocation, and maybe even buy stuff not on the benchmark due to your research and convinction.

Now, as Jonathan mentioned, the real question is whether the manager is worth the fee.

If he's delivering market beating returns nett of fees, do you really care about what he charges? A high fee would erode his returns to below market returns anyway, so it is also in their interest that the fees be reflective of the costs to run the fund.

As an example, I will point you to First State Dividend Advantage, which has, nett of fees, beaten MSCI AP ex-Japan handily. (Usual disclaimer of past performance not representative of future results). However do note that not all funds perform like this fund does. There are quite a number of funds out there that just can't deliver the Alpha returns. Well, no one said you had to invest in those fund right?

I could say a lot more, but I'm not about to turn this into an essay, got a feeling my answer is already longer than all other 8 answers (as of this point of writing) combined.

Now, before the naysayers and protesters come in, please, civil discussion only.

I think this is also a question of scale. You can offer 0.03% if u manage 7 trillion USD of assets, but SG being quite small, funds not be able to gather enough assets to lower the fees to an equivalent amount. At the end of the day, expenses for the fund company need to be paid. For example, even an AUM of 1 billion SGD, only generates 300,000 SGD of revenue at 0.03%. But 1.5% generates just enough to pay the expenses and turn a small profit

I would think that the fees are to pay the fund/trust manager, for their efforts. I Guess the fact that we are a small little dot also gives the restriction of a high competitive environment.