The Financial Services Consumer Panel have issued a damning condemnation on the £5tr British Funds Industry for failing to tell people what they are paying for and how much they are paying when they invest their money in British Funds.

You can read its discussion paper here.

If you’ve been reading recent blogs, you will remember that I had been asked to speak with the IMA on this (by the IMA). That meeting was pulled the day after I published my frustration with them and the day before we were due to meet.

In my blog this morning I talked about the need for DC trustees to get to the bottom of what their members are paying on their funds. One senior independent trustee was complaining that trustees were being asked to succeed where the NAPF and IMA have failed.

It is not enough to complain that we have not succeeded in the past. It is now time to put the failures behind us and press on, as the FSCP are doing and as Cass Business school are doing.

The pressure on the IMA and its members to do the right thing is becoming irresistible. Soon the DWP and FCAs requirements on Trustees and ICGs to publish the cost of the funds they offer to us will become law.

The sad reality is that almost everyone is to some degree in the pocket of the fund managers. Whether through advertising, corporate hospitality, commission or simply the old boy network, we have become afraid of the managers and their money.

Except it isn’t really “their” money, it is our money. And it’s time we were told what they are doing with it!

Then perhaps we will be able to shut up!