The suits claim that the country’s two largest banks overcharged for mutual funds which they claimed were actively managed, but which the plaintiffs claim actually copied benchmark indexes. The lawsuits were filed Tuesday in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. RBC and TD declined to comment. (Globe and Mail)

Talking point: Investors pay much more for actively-managed funds, whose managers make decisions about which stocks to buy and sell rather than simply mimicking the stock market. Canada has a disproportionate amount of closet indexing, according to a paper in the Journal of Financial Economics, which calculates that 37 per cent of equity mutual funds are closet indexers, compared to 15 per cent in the U.S. If B.C.’s Supreme Court sides with the class action, the litigants may have difficulty at higher court. Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada denied an attempt to form a class action against Telus. In September 2018, the court similarly dismissed an attempt by Voltage Pictures to file a class action against the 55,000 people they alleged illegally downloaded or streamed their films and television shows.