Outside fund managers may not be worth the extra money they’re paid. The Wall Street Journal reports that, despite the higher expense ratio for outsourcing stock picks for those funds that have no in-house staff, performance by outsiders tends to be only slightly better than their in-house counterparts in some cases, and far behind in certain international funds. According to figures from Financial Research Corp., the average expense ratio for international bond funds with outside managers was 1.22%, about 1.5 times greater than the fees charged by in-house managers, but the outside managers produced returns that were only a percentage point or two better. Some outsiders do outperform their in-house peers by four to six percentage points in certain fund categories, but taken as a whole results are mixed – a fact that doesn’t seem to faze investors, who increasingly are putting their money in subadvised funds. The Journal notes that many firms are attempting to bring the lagging international returns up by switching to smaller advisers who can better focus on investors’ portfolios.