Investment Q&A

RBF209: On RBF 209, it is a fund of funds, so a mutual fund that holds other mutual funds and charges a 1.69% fee. The returns have been fine for a low-risk fund but it is hard for us to view a fee that is close to 2% as being justified here. Something like VCNS has a far lower fee (0.25%) and much better performance (five year 4.02% vs 2.50%) and should be able to offer a similar return profile in our view. RBF269: The fund has a decent net asset base of $2.2B, and MER of 1.87%. RBF269 provides investors with exposure to a broadly diversified, high-quality Canadian equity portfolio. We think the expense ratio is quite high (1/87%) compared to a portfolio that is bascially just quite similar to the TSX index; We think investors can achieve similar results through low-cost ETFs such as XIU (0.18%, also with better performance five year 9.93% vs 7.30%). RBF272 we think could be replaced by VBAL for a 1.60% fee savings and again much-better performance (6.11% vs 5.00% five years). The Investco Fund, while calling itself 'international' is still 47% invested in the US. We would prefer VIU, for non-North American exposure. Again, it has lower fees and much better performance than the fund, even with less exposure to the hot US market.