Inside J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s US equity range, two strategies sit within the same fund house, target the same market, and charge fees that are 85 basis points apart. The UK universe of US-equity funds — where passive has consistently beaten active over a decade — makes that gap worth unpacking.
What’s actually happening
The data block here contains three share classes across two distinct strategies. The JPMorgan America Equity Fund (USD) and its EUR-denominated equivalent are both “C” share classes — these are institutional classes, not available on a standard retail platform. The €8.3bn in size behind both reflects the same underly ing strategy, just accessed in different currencies. At 0.65%, they are priced for institutional buyers. A retail investor checking their ISA platform won’t see these classes; they would be looking at a retail equivalent at a higher annual fee (OCF).
The JPMorgan US Value Fund is a different proposition entirely. Its “A” share class is a retail class, and the 1.50% annual fee reflects that. The CNH denomination — Chinese offshore renminbi — tells you this share class was designed primarily for Asian distribution channels, not UK investors on a domestic platform. The underly ing strategy, however, is a straightforward US value tilt: a concentrated active book seeking to buy cheaper US stocks than the broad market holds.
The important distinction: you cannot meaningfully compare the 1.50% retail fee on the US Value fund with the 0.65% institutional fee on the America Equity fund as a straight cost choice. They are not competing for the same buyer. What you can compare is the strategic question — does a dedicated value tilt in US equities justify an active premium at all, in a category that has punished active managers for years?
Why it matters for you
The UK universe of US-equity funds has been one of the hardest places to justify active management over the past decade. The S&P 500’s concentration in a handful of mega-cap technology companies — the big cloud businesses like Microsoft, Amazon and Google — has meant that passive funds tracking the index have consistently outperformed the median active fund in this category. Active managers who underweight those names lag. Active managers who chase them start to look like expensive trackers.
Value strategies face an additional headwind here. US value — cheaper, often older-economy stocks trading below the market’s average multiple — has spent most of the last decade trailing US growth. A fund explicitly tilting toward that factor is making a specific bet: that the value premium returns, and that the manager can find it. At 1.50% a year, that bet needs to pay off consistently.
The CNH denomination on the US Value Fund also matters in practice. A UK investor buying this class through a domestic platform would carry Chinese renminbi currency exposure on top of the underly ing US equity exposure — an unintended layer of risk that has nothing to do with the investment thesis. Most UK-based platforms won’t list this class at all. If you are researching this strategy for a UK portfolio, it is worth confirming which share class your platform actually offers and what the sterling or dollar equivalent fee looks like.
What to watch next
First, the value factor itself. US value’s relative performance versus growth is the single biggest driver of whether a fund like this earns its active fee. A sustained rotation — driven by higher-for-longer rates, or a valuation unwind in growth stocks — would change the calculus significantly. Second, whether J.P. Morgan brings a sterling or euro retail class of the US Value fund to UK platforms with a more competitive fee. The CNH class sitting at CNH 3.5bn suggests genuine AUM — the strategy has buyers somewhere. And third, the broader passive pressure in IA North America: if the category average active fee keeps drifting toward 0.80%–0.90%, a 1.50% fund with a specific factor tilt becomes harder to hold regardless of the thesis.
Funds Benchmark provides research and tooling for institutional and private investors. Nothing in this note is investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any specific fund. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.