Editorial: fees consultation welcome, but where's the regulator?

The issue of what investors pay and what they get for it is of particular significance to the defined contribution arena, because savers are at an extra level of remove from their investments and in many cases only involved with them in the most passive sense.

The next few years will see this class of investors – who barely know they have investments – grow massively as a consequence of auto-enrolment.

Of course, the code is not a code yet. It is a consultation on the ‘parameters’ of a code following a consultation about DC – which included charge simplification – by the Pensions Regulator.

So the cynical view to take of the announcement is that it is hand-wringing on a subject over which many a hand has already been wrung.

Another cynic might wonder why the IMA and the ABI have not already made more unilateral efforts to force their members to address opaque charging.

But the optimist looks again at the consensus among infrequently like-minded bodies about this initiative and hopes the objections of cynics might be quashed by it.

On the day PW reveals the cost to pension scheme members simply for their funds converting currencies – far from the most expensive aspect of investment – is £330,000 for every £1bn of their assets, it is clear that fund management charging is not clear enough.

Of course you, reader, know this. Who doesn’t? So while consensus is welcome, it is also implied, and for this reason something like this code of conduct, when it comes into being, needs a couple more signatures – those of Steve Webb and Bill Galvin.