The model is based on specific assets under management thresholds relative to each fund, with investors receiving discounts only after the AUM surpasses those limits. When the pricing was revealed last week, none of the 41 funds qualified for tiered pricing.
Analysts told Investment Week the move to share economies of scale and value with investors was a welcome one, given the recent implementation of the Consumer Duty and the warning from the Financial Conduct Authority on issues with assessment of value reports and the setting of fees.
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Ryan Hughes, head of investment partnerships at AJ Bell, said: "It is encouraging to see that in the early weeks on Consumer Duty legislation and in the third year of the assessment of value process that asset managers are looking to finally pass on some of the benefits of the vast economies of scale that their significant asset bases bring."
Jason Hollands, managing director of Bestinvest, and Rory Maguire, UK managing director of Fundhouse, both echoed Hughes' sentiment, deeming the move a "positive development".
Other asset managers have also sought to differentiate their fee models in the past, Hollands said, noting Fidelity's ‘fulcrum fees', which the company abandoned shortly after launch due to "little traction".
"As a fund gets bigger, fee rates reduce, bringing benefits to all investors in the fund," he said. "It would not surprise me if we see this start to catch on with other firms."
While Hollands commended BlackRock's tiered structure for being "relatively straightforward", Hughes and Maguire did not share his optimism, instead criticising the asset management giant for its "complicated" model.
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Hughes said that BlackRock's tiered pricing will bring "little immediate effect to investors given the majority of the fund range have not hit the AUM thresholds and, even then, the discount only applies to the assets over the thresholds".
He also warned that with the cost of passive investing continuing to fall, active managers have not yet "truly grasped the nettle that the cost of investing in active funds is still too high". If they fail to do so, he said passive strategies will "continue to eat their lunch".
As a result, Hughes criticised the move as mere "window dressing", although he praised the reasoning behind BlackRock's attempt to cut prices.
Fundhouse's Maguire said he would have preferred for fees to have been reduced rather than introducing the tiered model, which he deemed a "blanket rule that is not specific to a fund".
"Value for money is fund by fund, not at a fund range level. [If] they believe manager A is more skilled than manager B and they have evidence for this, perhaps manager A would have no fee cut and manager B would," he said.
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Maguire took BlackRock's hypothetical example of 75bps as a fund's annual management charge, and said that, under the model, the client would take the "bulk of the risk".
"If performance on such a fund is poor and value has not been created, the client still pays the 75bps fee. Therefore, we argue that the client takes the bulk of the fee risk. So, it would follow that clients should not share 50/50 in the value, because they take more of that fee risk," he said.
"With a fee of 75bps, that implies that the added value would need to exceed 150bps (150bps = 50/50), and maybe 225bps of added value starts to look fair (1/3 - 2/3 sharing).
"You would describe a manager that added 225bps per annum as quite rare and they would deserve the 75bps fee, but most managers probably would not on this basis because of the rarity."