UK investors are paying almost three times as much for stocks and funds as investors in the US.

The average cost of a stocks and shares investment fund was 1.24 per cent in the UK, according to the asset manager Vanguard. The average for a bond fund was 0.71 per cent. In the US equity funds cost an average of 0.42 per cent while bond funds charged 0.37 per cent.

The analysis for The Times involved all the funds available to invest in now — those that are actively managed by expensive human fund managers as well as passive tracker products that simply replicate the holdings of a stock market index. Older versions of funds that have additional charges were discounted and the averages were