Glossary · Costs
OCF
Ongoing Charges Figure
The annual cost of running a fund, expressed as a percentage of the money you have invested in it.
The OCF bundles the management fee with the administration, custody, audit and registrar costs a fund incurs over a year. It is deducted from the fund itself rather than billed to you, so it does not appear as a line on a statement — it shows up as a slightly lower unit price than the fund would otherwise have had.
Because it is taken inside the fund, a published price or NAV series is normally already net of the OCF. That matters when comparing costs: subtracting the OCF again from a net return counts it twice.
The OCF excludes transaction costs the fund pays when buying and selling holdings, any performance fee, and whatever your platform or broker charges you separately. The total you actually bear is therefore higher than the OCF alone.
How we calculate it
The fund’s published ongoing charge, read every weekday or checked by hand against published fund data; a lower new figure is taken as a fee cut and a higher one only after review. Each fund page gives the date the figure was last confirmed. Stored in basis points; 100 bps = 1.00%.
The full method, with a worked exampleOn Fundology: Every fund’s ongoing charge
Related terms
- Fee dragThe cumulative amount a fund’s ongoing charges remove from a holding over a period, compounded year on year.
- NAVThe per-unit value of a fund’s assets after its liabilities, normally struck once per day.
- Total returnThe return of an investment including income (dividends or interest), not just the change in price.
More terms on costs
Definitions describe how a term is used on Fundology. This is information, not advice.