Roland Van den Brink, member of the executive board at Mn Services, said that while the report made some progress on the definition of fiduciary management, it is difficult to judge costs solely on basis points.

He said: “Costs are relative. The point is that large and small funds have mandates of different sizes. A larger mandate is always relatively less costly than a smaller mandate.”

This sentiment was echoed by Rob Kamphuis, director of fiduciary management at F&C Investments.

Mr Kamphuis said: “Most respondents gave an indication of fees, so yes there is a surcharge above management fees, but it depends on how you’re going to run the portfolio. I don’t think it is possible to say it’s more expensive than this.

“If you go passive, are you going to include alternatives? If yes, then of course it is cheaper, but then if you want some form of overlay or high alpha component, it will get more expensive, so it’s difficult to say.”

However, like Mr Van den Brink, Mr Kamphuis believed that the report was a step in the right direction for defining and explaining fiduciary management.

The report was authored by Dutch consultancy Bureau Bosch.

Its results showed that an average fiduciary management portfolio costs 34 basis points compared to 24 for active and 11 for passive management.

Bureau Bosch urged pension funds to take this into account in their risk profile, and put the onus on managers to make sure that fiduciary management returns merited these higher expenses.

The survey questioned 20 fiduciary managers, nine of which were Dutch and the rest of which were foreign.

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