ESMA report highlights high investment product costs for retail investors
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) today published its third annual statistical report on the cost and performance of European Union (EU) retail investment products. In the report ESMA finds that the costs of investing in key financial products, such as UCITS funds, retail alternative funds, and structured investment products (SRPs) remain high and diminish the investment outcome for final investors.
The report reveals that UCITS costs only marginally declined over time. For one-year investments they were 1.4% in 2019 compared to 1.5% in 2018 on average across asset classes.
Average gross UCITS fund performance depends on market developments and varies significantly over time. It amounted to 7.7% in 2019, while it reached no more than +0.2% in 2018 for a one-year investment. Let’s note that the market impact of COVID-19 falls outside the reporting period.
Retail clients pay on average around 40% more than institutional investors across asset classes. A ten-year investment of EUR 10,000 in a portfolio composed of equity, bond and mixed funds led to a gross value of around EUR 21,800 and EUR 18,600 after costs. Around EUR 3,200 in costs were paid by the investor.
Regarding risks, the report finds that higher risk exposures entailed higher costs irrespective of the asset class.
The evidence on cost structure showed that costs were higher for active equity and bond UCITS compared to passive and UCITS ETFs, ultimately implying net underperformance of active equity and bond UCITS, on average, compared to passive and UCITS ETFs. Top-25% active equity UCITS overperformed compared to the top-25% passive and related benchmarks, at shorter horizons. However, the cohort of UCITS changes over time making it complicated for investors to consistently identify outperforming UCITS.
Retail AIFs, similar to UCITS, showed high return volatility. While being negative in 2018, gross annualised returns in 2019 were 12% for Fund of Funds (FoFs) and 9% for the residual category “Others” that includes investment primarily focused on equity and bonds. Net returns confirm what has been observed for gross returns, being 11% for FoFs and 7% for Others.
There is limited comparability across Member States. Heterogeneity and data availability issues persisted, as well as lack of harmonisation in national regulation.
This report aims at facilitating increased participation of retail investors in capital markets by providing consistent EU-wide information on cost and performance of retail investment products. It also demonstrates the relevance of disclosure of costs to investors, as required by the MiFID II, UCITS and PRIIPs rules and the need for asset managers and investment firms to act in the best interest of investors, as laid down in MiFID II, and the UCITS and AIFM Directives.