In her report, Miller argued that if annual management charges were reduced from 0.75% to 0.65%, investors would be £488m better off every year.
She said: “When you consider that these fund groups hire teams of analysts and expert fund managers who all claim to have a unique investment strategy that can produce better investment returns than their competitors, the price clustering does not reflect this.
“Different products, with different ‘ingredients’ and vastly different track records should command different pricing.
“Whether the fund is run by two or 20 people, be managing £200m or £2,000m, have a brilliant or disastrous track record, the price directly charged by active retail fund managers does not seem to change.”
However, Potter said it was “easy” to be critical of active management during tricky market conditions and that the story may be different in 12 to 18 months time when he envisions a “rebound for active managers” that may just quieten the tirade of criticism leveraged at the industry.
