You can claim some of those hidden fees and charges for yourself.

Sun Herald - 22nd Nov 2009 - Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon - Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is also the editor of AFR Smart Investor magazine.

You can claim some of those hidden fees and charges for yourself.

A LITTLE strapped for cash before Christmas? Then consider this: you're probably missing out on $2000 or more a year you don't even know about.

That's a conservative estimate of what hidden fees and charges on your super, managed funds, insurance policies and loans may amount to. And that's without counting the cost of what you paid to establish them.

Each year you have these products in place, a so-called trailing commission will either be paid to the adviser who arranged them for you or, if you bought them direct from a provider, simply sucked up by them as additional profit.

Say you have an average super fund of $90,000. Someone, somewhere could be earning 0.6 per cent a year on that - $540. Add $50,000 in managed investments outside super and there's another annual kickback of some $300.

Not only do these charges come out of your profits, they increase with your balances.

Then there's insurance. Any risk insurance you arranged through a broker - and most of us don't buy it unless it's pointed out how much we need it - will earn them up to 10 per cent of your premiums each year if they accepted the large initial commissions on offer, or 30 per cent if not.

So if you pay life and total and permanent disability premiums of $500 a year, trauma of $700 and income protection of $1000, at 10 per cent, you'll add $220 to your trail tally.

This, too, will increase over time, this time with your level of cover.

General insurance and home loans arranged through a broker will also attract commission - in the case of the latter, a hefty one. A $400,000 mortgage at 0.25 per cent would earn them $1000 a year.

Although you don't actually pay the trail on insurance and mortgages - the provider does - you can see the total commission you generate could actually be a whole lot more than $2000. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Last week the country's largest super funds ratified their industry body's bold proposal to stamp out hidden commissions. From July 2012, costs will be laid out for consumers and they will be given a choice of payment method, rather than having them automatically netted off returns.

This is a great development for those signing up for new funds at that stage.

But there's also a way to reclaim the trail on products you already hold - today - via one of the raft of commission rebate services.

If you simply transfer "broker authority" from your adviser to the execution-only service, it will pay a portion to you. But how much and how often varies greatly and services operate very differently.

Choice magazine this month analyses the burgeoning industry and, when it comes to trail commission on super balances under $50,000, likes Commission Refunders, iRefund, MyMoney, Refund Easy and YourShare.com.au.

For balances of $75,000-$200,000, Dixon Advisory gets the tick. Note: Most services "dial down" up-front commissions to zero on new contributions and many also offer rebates on the other products above.

But remember, everyone deserves to get paid for what he or she does. If your financial adviser or broker gives you a decent level of ongoing service, they are entitled to money for it. If not, it's time to claim it for yourself.