The Investment Management Association will launch a consultation into industry standards for how asset management firms disclose portfolio turnover rates and costs as early as next month, PP can reveal.
The trade body said that, as part of its work on making implicit costs more transparent, it is working on an industry standard for the calculation of portfolio turnover rates - enabling turnover rates on funds to be compared to their peer groups.
It said it would also be consulting on how the spread - the difference between the price a fund manager pays for a stock and the price it sells at - can be explained and what this means in terms of costs for investors.
IMA chief executive Daniel Godfrey told PP: "You will have an idea of the average spread on your portfolio and the portfolio turnover rate, which will give you information about how active is this fund relative to its peer group and what does this mean in terms of spreads."
He added this was all part of being accountable to clients and giving them a "fully comprehensive picture across the piece".
Godfrey said: "People think there are visible costs and there hidden costs, expressed both through the ultimate performance figures and also through portfolio turnover rates.
"What is not really considered is that the hidden costs, as they are described, are not money that is going to the fund manager, these are costs of doing the job we are being paid to do."
