The date when the fund was launched. Where funds have merged or been renamed, we record the date on which the fund in its current form was created. This means that price history may sometimes pre-date the formation date.
This refers to the number of counters (shares, debentures, etc) in the portfolio as at the date indicated on the fact sheet. The purpose of the figure is to give a rough indication of the risk diversification of the fund.
This is the price, in cents, at which the units were listed on the first day of trading.
Most management companies apply the same scale of initial charges to funds within the same sector (eg, all equity funds). For this reason, we show the table of charges on a consolidated management company page rather than on each fund page.
Annual fees (or, more correctly, annual management fees) are the fees which the management company is entitled to charge for managing the assets of the fund on behalf of investors. The fees are expressed as a percentage of fund assets charged on an annual basis. The manager of a fund worth R100m with an annual fee of 1.5% recovers R1.5m per annum. In practise the fee is recovered daily or monthly – eg, R125,00 per month in the above example.
Note that the NAV is calculated after deduction of the annual fees and any other portfolio charges.
The initial charge is a once-off entry cost levied by most management companies and LISPs. It is usually justified by managers on the grounds that it offsets the costs of marketing, loading a new account, and allocating units to investors.
The Initial Charges found on each management company page are grouped according to the applicable fund types (eg, by category).
Initial Charges shown are those applied by the management company for purposes made directly from the management company. Different Initial Charges will apply if units in a fund are purchased via a LISP. Note also that initial charges often include a provision for broker commission, but this is often negotiable (especially on larger amounts), and in some cases the management company will waive brokerage if the investors deals directly with the management company.
All charges and service fees are shown as Vat inclusive on FundsData Online.
Many investors are attracted to the idea of being able to exploit the cyclical nature of the market by switching from, say, an industrial fund to a mining fund when they feel bullish about gold and bearish about industrials. Many management companies offer reduced Initial Charges if unitholders wish to switch from one fund to another within the same management company.
Switching from an income fund to an equity fund usually attracts an Initial Charge, although this may be reduced to a lower amount. Many management companies take the view that the initial charge should only be recovered once on all funds invested. They therefore subtract the income fund initial charge (usually 1%) from the equity fund initial charge in the event of a switch (eg, the investor would pay 4%). This is obviously not a universal practice: see the Switching Charges table under each CIS manager for more information.
Switches from equity funds to income funds are often free of charge, or a nominal fee may be levied.
The TER shows the total expenses incurred by the manager in running the fund, including the annual management fee and other expenses charged directly to the portfolio. The TER is expressed on an annualised basis (a TER of 1.7% of a R1bn fund equals costs of R17m per annum). Note that TERs do not necessarily include dealing costs – not all funds deal with these costs in the same way for TER purposes.
This is the Total Expense Ratio, effective December 2007, for the A unit class of the fund.
This shows the portion of the TER that was attributable to performance charges. A TER of 1.7% with a TER Perf% of 0.8% equals costs of R17m for the year of which R8m were performance fees.
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