Glossary of Fundsupermarket terms

Fundsupermarket
The name of Cavendish Online's investment fund management system, operated via the Internet.

Fundsnetwork
Fidelity Investments' online investment superstore. It brings together over 820 funds from 51 different fund management companies, offering unrivalled choice to investors and their advisers.

ISA
Individual Savings Account. An ISA is not an investment in itself. It is a wrapper protecting your investments from tax. Anyone who is resident for UK tax purposes can invest in an ISA. The amount you invest in an ISA depends on what type of ISA you choose. Within the maximum limit for investment, you can select a mix of components to suit yourself or you can put the whole amount into Stocks & Shares. You can only take out one ISA in any tax year and it must be with a single provider (Fundsnetwork is a single provider). The maximum investment in an ISA is currently £7200 for the tax year 2007/08.

OEIC or Unit Trust
Open Ended Investment Company. (Most Unit Trust are gradually being changed into OEICs). These funds are where your ISA monies are invested; hence the term "inside or outside of and ISA".

Transfer (Pep or ISA)
Transferring your ISA/Pep involves the current manager selling the ISA/Pep funds and sending the cash to the new manager (Fundsnetwork). The funds are therefore not invested in the stockmarket for a period of time. This is used where either you wish to change your portfolio whilst moving into Fundsnetwork or where the existing manager does not allow reregistration.

Reregistration
Where your existing ISA/Pep plan manager allows this, you can simply reregister your existing ISA/Peps to Fundsnetwork without incurring any buying or selling fees. You will not be "out of the market" whilst the reregistration takes place.

Renewal Commission
Many fund managers use a part of the annual management charge on the fund to pay a commission every year to the financial adviser. This is usually 0.5% of the value of the fund, although it ranges from 0.25% to 0.5%. A number of funds do not pay renewal commission. The best way to tell is to look at the annual management charge; if it is 1% or more then we probably receive 0.5% renewal commission.

Fund Finder
The Fund Finder tool will help you to search for specific funds, depending on the criteria you choose. You can use it to call up the funds of any of the 55 investment companies on FundsNetwork, or look at all the funds covering a specific geographic region, for instance. The more criteria you use, the more you refine your short list. To make it even easier, Fund Finder is pre-programmed with several of the most common searches. Just click on the relevant link on the Fund Chooser page to get a list of all the funds on FundsNetwork that fit the criterion you're most interested in. If, for example, you're interested in funds that invest in Japan, you might select "Funds by region"