CI Investments Inc. has received relief from regulators allowing it to calculate management expense ratios (MERs) on a monthly basis, due to its new expense structure.

Currently, investment funds can only disclose their management expense ratio if the MER is calculated for the financial year, or a specified interim period. CI sought relief in order to be able to calculate and disclose MERs monthly because it has changed the expense structure of its funds so that the funds’ MERs will be relatively fixed and predictable.

Effective Sept. 1, 2005, CI funds changed their expense structure to replace the operating expenses charged to the funds with administration fees that are calculated as fixed annual percentages of the net asset values of each class of securities of the funds. As a result, the firm now bears all of the operating expenses of the funds (other than certain taxes, borrowing costs and certain new governmental fees) in return for the fixed administration fees.

The change to the expense structure of the funds was implemented in order to provide investors with the certainty of relatively fixed and predictable MERs for all future years. This also ensures the accuracy of the MERs regardless of the time periods over which they are calculated.