After Reimbursement Expense Ratio

  

Owning a mutual fund comes with charges. Annual ones. Every fund will have expenses, which are taken out of the investor's holdings periodically. These expenses are reported to investors as an expense ratio, giving the amount as a percentage of the total assets. The charges cover things like management costs, fees, and operating expenses.

But the news isn't all bad. Along with taking out money for expenses, some funds also give some money back in the form of reimbursements.

There can be several reasons for this. One of the more prominent purposes of these payments is to keep the expense ratio below a certain amount. Some funds seek to limit expenses in order to make the funds more attractive to buyers. These so-called capped funds use reimbursements to lower the expense ratio. Particular mutual funds can reimburse specific fees or reward long-time holders by giving them a reimbursement after they have stayed invested in a fund for a minimum number of years.

The lowered ratio is reported as "after-reimbursement" so that investors can better track what's going on.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is an Expense Ratio?14 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop What is an expense ratio Well this

00:07

ratio tells you how much you are being over charged

00:12

for your fund management services in a mutual fund It's

00:16

all about how much you're getting charged for the pleasure

00:19

and it's not always an easy real number to get

00:21

to So for almost all funds Now the regulators require

00:25

that funds published this number Why Well because the marginal

00:30

expense on your fund might be extremely low While the

00:33

overall expense might be well a lot higher How does

00:37

that work Well the charges mirror the progressive income tax

00:41

system Actually that is in a given mutual fund The

00:44

feet to manage The first say billion dollars might be

00:48

two percent then from a billion to four billion in

00:51

might be one and a half percent Then from four

00:53

billion to eight billion one percent than from eight billion

00:56

toe monaural fifty billion it's half a percent from fifty

00:59

billion on up Well then its point four percent or

01:02

something like that And the fees include the twelve b

01:04

one administration charges which tend to hover around the tenth

01:08

of a percent yourself So from mega gargantuan fifty billion

01:12

Dollar funds well that marginal fee might be something like

01:16

forty basis points are point four percent That is for

01:20

the last hundred bucks into that mega gargantuan fifty billion

01:23

dollar mutual fund will the management fee is point four

01:27

percent or forty cents for every hundred dollars Really cheap

01:31

right that's the marginal expense the last little bit at

01:35

the end of the rainbow But the average expense well

01:38

would be meaningful e higher in that the fee for

01:41

the safe first billion dollars is to percent or twenty

01:44

million box Then for the next three billion well it's

01:47

one and a half percent or forty five million Then

01:49

from four billion to eight billion We'll say it's one

01:52

percent So you got forty million there We're just adding

01:54

things up and then from a billion dollar fifty billion

01:57

well you have a point Five percent so that fees

01:59

two hundred ten million noticed that two hundred ten million

02:02

it's forty two billion total let's add up the total

02:06

fees charged for a fifty billion dollar mutual fund But

02:09

we have twenty million plus forty five billion plus forty

02:11

minute plus two ten So the total fees charged on

02:15

that fifty billion dollars of assets under management are three

02:18

hundred fifteen million divided by that fifty billion dollars or

02:23

a little over zero point six percent higher than the

02:26

zero point five percent that was charged from the eight

02:30

billion teo Fifty billion dollars doesn't seem like much but

02:34

small differences for the investor when they have a good

02:36

jillion dollars on the line Well it makes a difference

02:39

And it adds up and it puts pressure on mutual

02:41

funds Tio have really good performance And those mutual fund

02:44

people have a lot of stress and work a zillion

02:46

hours and travel locked And you know somebody has to

02:49

pay for the alimony right Yeah sorry Keeping it real

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