May 5, 2016
Dear SEC
I support your April 2016 recommendation that investors receive customized, dollar-and-cents, disclosure of investment fees in the account statement they receive from their mutual fund companies.
As an investor saving for retirement, I believe I speak for many in saying that I would far prefer to pay a tiny extra cost in service fee in exchange for an explicit and transparent fee disclosure in my account statement.
Thanks for putting together the recommendation. If there is more I can do to help this measure come to pass, please let me know.
best wishes,
W. Zhang
p.s. This is a big ask, but since I am writing, I add that it would be even nicer if, in our account statements, we investors could also receive customized, dollar-and-cents estimates of our fund returns after tax (customized to each person's estimated tax bracket) and after inflation (using the current guess based on the difference between the 10 year treasury and 10 year TIPS rate).
This estimate would cost negligible extra effort once the companies start to provide customized fee information. I believe the extra information might encourage investors to plan more prudently and save more for the future. These behaviors in turn would benefit the mutual fund companies by growing their assets at a faster pace.
I believe this because I run through this exercise with my account statement once a year. It always scares me into saving a little more.