My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 63 and 67 in my name, which are linked. I am glad that some time after I tabled these amendments the Official Opposition tabled their amendments, which are very much on the same point. I hope that what I did may have been some kind of a stimulus to them, because we are to a considerable extent on the same point.
There is a difference between the approach that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, takes and that which I take. However, before I explain the difference, I wish to articulate what the problem is. This problem is not confined to the pension area but is well known to those who have studied any economics at all. It is known in the trade as the principal agent problem, where a principal cannot achieve his or her economic objectives without giving an agent responsibility for dealing with it. The incentive for the agent may be very different from the incentive with which the principal originally entrusted the agent to carry out what is needed. Here the principal is essentially the pension fund beneficiary, via the pension fund itself, and the agent is the investment manager. How is this of interest? I would hope that my noble friend the Minister, even if he does not accept either the Labour amendment or my amendments, will agree that there is a problem here that has to be addressed. I hope that he will say how the Government propose to address it.
There are two differences between the approach adopted in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, and that adopted in mine. He seeks primarily to regulate various charges made for the carrying out of the investment. He mentioned disclosure, but the issue is mainly the cap on charges and other forms of regulatory charges. There are problems with that approach, which I shall not spell out because I do not want to detain the Committee.
What I have gone for is compulsory disclosure. In a competitive market, compulsory disclosure will go a very long way towards removing the mischief. If there is proper disclosure, there is no need for a cap or the regulation of charges in the first instance. We can then see how it works out. Events may subsequently suggest that there may be some need for regulation but initially the remedy must be to require disclosure. I have mentioned seven types of cost that I believe should be disclosed.
The noble Lord, Lord Browne, said that the sector might very inventively find some other form of charge that does not fall within these headings. I think that is highly unlikely. If noble Lords look at the headings, it is difficult to see how any charge could not fall under one or other of them.
The important thing is the principle. The funds are inclined to say, “You don’t need to worry about costs; all that matters is the investment performance of the fund net of costs”. That is not acceptable. The costs are massive in this area. Of course, the investment performance may differ according to what period of time you look at. One fund may have a very good performance during one period and a bad performance during another. One has to look at the costs. Some costs are not revealed at all; some are. Even with the costs that are revealed, there is such a lack of consistency that it is difficult to compare them and to see whether or not they are remotely fair.
There are also other defects in the system. One is, I have to say, one of the many defects of the accountancy profession in this country. According to the accountancy profession, the Investment Management Association is responsible for writing the statement of recommended practice on cost disclosure for fund managers. This is ludicrous. You are asking the foxes to regulate the hen coop, as it were. If my noble friend the Minister looks at this, I am sure that he will find that it needs a remedy.
There is another relevant point. At the end of the day it is not merely the pension fund beneficiaries who are being cheated by these excessive costs—and many of these costs are grossly excessive—but there is also the problem of pension fund deficits. The more costs are ramped up unnecessarily by the pension funds, the worse that will make the problem of deficits. Of course, there is no incentive for investment managers to expose the costs that they are incurring in their recommendations to the funds if they are not obliged to do so. It will only make most of them look rather expensive.
There have been some studies in this area, both here and in the United States. Among the findings of these studies is that there is absolutely no correlation between investment management fees and performance. There is also no correlation between portfolio churn, which creates a lot of income for various people, and performance. There is some evidence, although it is not conclusive, that portfolios are deliberately churned in order to generate commissions. In the United States, a study has been done that shows that most foreign exchange currency pairs are not monitored but that, when they are, the foreign exchange costs paid by funds are halved. There are problems across the board, such as the fact that custodian banks pay lower rates on cash than money market funds or that financial intermediaries can collect excessive rewards.
The FRC has some of these problems in its sights, but it is totally inadequate. I believe that the FCA is pressing fund managers to manage their research procurement, another area of costs that I have identified, in a more defensible and transparent way. However, it is no accident that typically pension funds meet in Manchester and fund managers meet in Monte Carlo. I hope that my noble friends, who have done such an
excellent job on this Bill, will take on board that this is a serious problem—the principal agent problem, as it affects pensions—and must be addressed one way or another.
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