Gosling's Grouse: Value in FCA studies

Part of competition review

So the regulator has come back once again to its favourite subject of trying to work out what value for money (VFM) is as far as funds go.

What are they getting at? What is VFM? Is it even a sentence most investors would - or do - use in the context of investment funds? Personally, I doubt any ordinary investor does. That is not the same as saying what is the cheapest, which seems to be what the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is getting at, but they are dressing it up in the VFM discussion. To its credit, when it started out on this 'journey' a couple of years ago with its competition review within asset management, it looked as if it had fallen for the very shallow view that good equalled cheap. Moody's warns FCA ...