We apply an individual investor s perspective to empirically examine the economics and determinants of the financial intermediary fee or spread which affects the financial performance of a sample of 66 defined contribution and 54 defined benefit Australian pension funds during 1991-93. We find that the intermediary spread is non-trivial and causes the average net return provided to individual investors to be significantly less than that earned by the financial intermediary on the pension fund portfolio. Factors affecting the demand for pension fund reputation as financial intermediary and the marginal fee for this reputation reflect underlying structural differences between these types of fund.