If you are buying investments (e.g. shares) they may be in a pooled investment (e.g. a unit trust or an ETF) and/or they may be parcelled up in a 'wrapper' (e.g. an ISA). We use the generic term 'Pool' to describe the pooling vehicle (not all costs will apply to all types of pooled investment). The added costs may comprise any of the following:

• Initial Pool charges

• Exit Pool charges

• IFA commissions

• Buy/sell spread on the price of the Pool

• Brokerage fees on selling the Pool

• Stamp duty & brokerage fees on buying the Pool

• Dealing costs on purchases/sales of shares within the Pool.

• Even higher dealing costs within a wrapper (you will find that some brokers charge more for trading within an ISA than they do for trading within a dealing account)

• Stamp duty (0.5%) on buying shares within the Pool

• Buy/sell spread on the price of shares within the Pool

• Annual Pool investment management charges

• Other administrative charges incurred by the Pool

• Annual wrapper management charges

• Dividend reinvestment fees (when the Pool treats reinvested dividends as a new purchase and charges accordingly)

• Performance fees, (particularly insidious, refer Deeper)

• 'Soft' commissions (when services such as technical analysis are supplied 'free' to a Trust by a brokerage in exchange for higher dealing commissions or guarantees on volume).

Also, don't forget 'Pools of Pools'. Most typically this is when a fund invests in other funds. It also occurs when you've delegated management of your wealth to an adviser who invests your money in its own funds; or in the funds of another manager with whom it has a 'special relationship'. In all cases you are incurring two levels of fees.

Phew! Anything else?

Yes, there's the little matter of renewal commissions (also called 'trail commissions').

As a matter of historical fact the regulator banned trail commissions on regulated products sold after 2012. We mention it now because:

1. If you bought a product before then and are still holding it you may still be paying. The only way to stop it is to sell.

2. The history of regulation is the history of plugging holes in a rusty bucket. Yesterday's scams may be banned, but today's scams haven't yet been uncovered. The water pressure remains - the need to reward intermediaries in the savings chain.

If you are paying, say, a 1.5% a year fund management fee you might be comfortable with this high charge because you believe you are buying exceptional expertise.

But what if you discovered that your fund manager was rebating 0.5% to your financial adviser? So that only 1% per year is being devoted to the management of your money and 0.5% is paying for your seller's marketing costs. This 0.5% is the "renewal commission".

The industry argues that so long as it is honest about the amounts you are paying, why should you care who it is being paid to?

Our view is straightforward. Unless this arrangement is declared to you, this is a scam. If you meet it, you know what to do.