The working paper proposes new measures for systemic risk in the hedge fund sector. These measures are based on the ability of hedge funds to influence (be influenced by) the performance trend of the entire hedge fund sector. The proposed measures display a high ability to identify periods of financial distress, are robust to modifications in the underlying econometric model and deliver an innovation in the monitoring of systemic risks in the fund industry.

ERRATUM - In the original version of this document published on 19 October 2017 in table V.3 on page 4, the values in the last four rows of column five were accidentally misreported. For this reason, ESMA now provides a corrected version, including the corrected values and a footnote pointing to the initial mistake.

ESMA carried out a first analysis on fund performance measures, developing initial metrics to analyse the impact of ongoing fees, one-off charges and inflation on the returns of mutual funds. Key preliminary results for the EU fund industry show: Substantial reduction in net returns available to investors, especially in the retail sector and weakly cost- or price-sensitive investment decisions by retail investors

On average ongoing fees and one-off charges and inflation-reduced returns available to investors by 29% of gross returns between 2013 and 2015. These reductions apply to all market segments, while varying across jurisdictions, asset classes and client types. Relative return reductions range from 11% for passive equity fund shares to 44% for retail fund shares in bond mutual funds. Relative and absolute return reductions for actively managed and retail fund shares tend to exceed those of passively managed and institutional fund shares. Despite the impact of fees and charges on the net outcome to investors, these do not seem to be reflected in investor choices.