Investor site fee hike

THOUSANDS of investors with accounts held by fund supermarket rplan will see charges double next month when they are moved to a rival.

Rplan will stop serving customers on April 20 to focus on businesses instead. Investors who do not transfer funds by then will be moved to Cofunds’s Investor-Direct Service, which charges an annual fee of up to 0.7 pc of total investments — twice rplan’s fee.

Rplan has written to customers to inform them of the change and will issue reminders. Those who miss the April deadline can still leave Cofunds penalty-free by opening an account with another firm, which will carry out the transfer process on their behalf.