The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that over the past five years, the investment industry has seen an unprecedented decline in fees of all types. The Globe's Rob Carrick writes that one notable exception is mutual fund fees. The average five-year decline in management expense ratios (MERs) for exchange-traded funds round out to 0.05 of a percentage point, which works out to 50 cents on an investment of $1,000 over a year. The average MER for the top 100 mutual funds is 1.99 per cent. Dan Hallett at HighView Financial Group said that fund companies have recently started to address fees in a limited way. Some have trimmed management fees, which are a component of fund MERs, and some firms now offer cheaper Series D versions of their funds for do-it-yourself investors who do not need advice. "It's only in the past couple of years that we've started to see lower-fee fund versions available and cuts in management fees," Mr. Hallett said. "Ten years ago, that was unheard of. They didn't cut fees because they didn't have to. Returns were strong and people were buying the products without any fee cuts. There really was no motivation or pressure or anything along those lines to push them to compete on fees."