The company owns a major life insurer and the country's largest mutual fund distributor.

It manages assets for institutional clients, fund distributors and ING labels, with approximately €326 billion in AUM.

When a fund sells Class B shares, fund distributors advance lump-sum commissions directly to brokers.

These investigations include discount brokerage firms and fund distributors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission requires disclosure of varying fee structures, but it is legal for a fund distributor to sell only the share class whose terms it likes best.

Then there is the added expenditure for marketing to tell the world how wonderful their funds are, plus the profit - on a higher revenue base - for the investment adviser and fund distributor.

He has since held separate meetings or conference calls with several of the big mutual fund distributors, including Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Merrill Lynch.

Last month, the country's financial regulatory commission asked all fund distributors, mainly banks, to verify that no trading abuses were occurring, said Simone Delcourt, head of its department for regulation of mutual funds and pension funds.

Insurance companies, it said, pay sales representatives more for selling retirement products than mutual fund distributors do.

A Gallup survey commissioned by the Investors Group of Winnipeg, one of the country's biggest mutual fund distributors, found that 58 percent of Canadians had savings in individual registered retirement savings plans last year.