ING’s pre-choice bid for DIY market

By Zoe Fielding

IN a pre-choice attempt to attract do-it-yourself (DIY) superannuation investors, ING has halved minimum investment amounts and cut management expense ratios (MERs) for its wholesale trusts.

The reductions see minimum initial investment amounts for each of ING’s 16 wholesale trusts fall from $100,000 to $50,000, while minimum additional investments drop from $20,000 to $10,000.

ING executive director personal investments, Alexis George, said minimum initial investments of $100,000 made it difficult for DIY investors to enter wholesales funds.

Reducing these minimums would give ING access to “a bigger slice” of the DIY market, she said.

“The DIY end of the spectrum continues to grow and we want to make sure we’ve got a product that can play in that sector,” she said.

George said while most DIY fund holders still invest in direct equities and property, she expected the demand for funds and trust products to grow in future.

MERs on two global wholesale investment trusts — Global Share Trust and Global Emerging Markets Share Trust — have also been reduced from 1.10 per cent to 0.99 per cent.

George said the MER reductions were made possible by improved efficiencies derived from closing other global products.

“We haven’t been competitive in this market for a while so we just want to advertise that we’re back out there,” she said.

The reductions come less than a month after the company slashed administration fees on its wrap account PortfolioOne by up to 36 basis points, and just six weeks after it cut, at short notice, commissions paid to advisers putting clients into its Savings Maximiser bank account.

ING is not the only institution to reduce its management expense ratios in the lead-up to choice of fund on July 1.

Last week also saw BT slash fees on 52 of its wholesale investment funds, highlighting that 85 per cent of retail money now flowed through platforms that accessed these institutional vehicles.

In other related news, Navigator has accepted the inevitable and entered the low-cost ‘baby platform’ space, while Colonial First State has spruced up its FirstChoice platform with several manager and asset class additions, insurance premium discounts and two tools to reduce paperwork for contributing employers.