At Evenlode, we are committed to delivering high-quality, long-term investment management services to our clients at a cost that is open, clear and competitive. As part of this commitment, with effect from January 2017, we have removed all investment research costs from the trading commissions paid by the Evenlode Income fund. These costs will now be paid directly by Evenlode, rather than from the fund, thereby reducing the fund’s overall charges for investors.
We prefer to do our own investment research and reach our own conclusions, but a third-party view is sometimes of use in building up a picture of a business. With this in mind, we have carefully chosen our external research providers, and maintain a focused list of brokers. Under the prior model, some of the cost of external research fell outside of the fund’s periodic charge, as the payment was ‘bundled’ in with the cost of trading. With the new arrangement, only the costs of executing trades and associated transaction taxes now fall outside of that one charge.
We believe that Evenlode Income’s periodic charge represents the simplest way of presenting the cost of investing in the fund (it is equivalent to the widely quoted Ongoing Charges Figure, or OCF). However, we do acknowledge that the OCF is not perfect, as it excludes costs, such as broker commission and transaction taxes.
Recognising this, we strive for our investors to have information about the total cost of ownership, in order that they gain full transparency on charges. The total cost includes the aforementioned unavoidable cost of trading (although turnover within the fund is low, it is not zero) and we are working on additional disclosures around trading costs, which will be available soon. We hope this underscores our commitment to providing transparency and value-for-money to our client base.
