The Investment Company Institute came out with its annual study of fund fees on Monday, as President Paul Schott Stevens explained an XBRL data-tagging project to the SEC roundtable on interactive data.

The fee study revealed that 90 percent of total stock fund assets in 2005 were in funds with below-average expense ratios. Fees And Expenses of Mutual Funds, 2005 holds few surprises, as 2005 continued a trend towards lower fund fees and expenses ongoing since 1980.

Study author Sean Collins said the results show investors are paying attention to the role of fees as a component of total returns. The study is posted on the ICI Web site.

Meanwhile, back at SEC headquarters, Stevens described how a system being developed by the ICI with PriceWaterhouseCoopers will let investors easily compare and contrast the risk/return profiles of hundreds of funds.

"XBRL taxonomy" will strengthen the risk/return summary, already a feature of all funds' prospectuses, "into an even more powerful tool than the Commission envisioned when it adopted it in 1998 as a way to help investors compare one fund to another," he said at the Commission's roundtable on interactive data.

He also urged the SEC to permit abbreviated disclosure documents that point the way to more detailed information.  

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