Investment trust charges

The way investment trusts present charges information is changing following the introduction of the FCA’s Consumer Composite Investments (CCI) disclosure regime. The CCI regime is designed to improve how cost, risk and performance information is shown to retail investors, and it replaces the previous Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs) approach.

In September 2024, the FCA declared that temporarily, investment trusts did not have to adhere to European PRIIPs regulation, which had certain rules around how costs and charges figures must be declared. This meant that investment trusts did not have to publish a Key Information Document (KID) and they did not have to lay out their costs and charges in the same way that a fund does. Different Investment trusts will approach this in different ways, meaning that some trusts you invest in may choose to publish the documents, while others do not.

During the transition to CCI, you may see different disclosure documents for different investment trusts. Some trusts may continue to provide a Key Information Document (KID) (or similar legacy disclosures) for a period, while others may move earlier to the newer CCI-style disclosure (this is known as a Product Summary) and some may provide no disclosure document at all. This means the format and the way charges are displayed can vary between trusts while the market moves to the new standard.

This is not just a short-term change. There is a transition period where firms can move across to the new CCI approach, followed by a longer-term position from 8 June 2027 where CCI disclosures become the standard. Over that time, the industry will move away from PRIIPs-style disclosure rules and towards Product Summaries for consumer-facing information.

As a result, you might sometimes find that a trust’s charges look unusual when compared with other investments – for example, the ongoing charges figure may appear to be missing, shown as 0%, or presented differently depending on which disclosure document you are looking at. This does not necessarily mean the trust has no running costs. Investment trusts can incur costs such as management fees, administration expenses and transaction costs, and these can be described differently across legacy disclosures versus Product Summaries.

If you want to understand the costs incurred by a trust – for example to compare it with similar trusts – you can usually find further detail in the trust’s annual report and accounts, and any additional cost disclosure documents it publishes. These costs are typically borne within the trust and are reflected in the value of its assets, which in turn is reflected in the net asset value (NAV), rather than being billed to you separately as a direct charge. If you have any queries about the costs of a trust, you can contact the provider directly.

For more on how investment trusts work, take a look at our investment trusts page.