Putnam Funds is reducing the total expense ratio across its four Absolute Return Funds by up to 54%.

Doing so also will reduce expenses by up to 24% for the Putnam RetirementReady Funds, the firm's ten target-date/lifecycle retirement funds, since the Absolute Return Funds are included in those underlying investments.

The Absolute Return Funds have $2.6 billion in assets. The reduction helps the funds "compete aggressively across the marketplace, and helps to further their use as core investments for many different types of investment portfolios across all time horizons," says Robert Reynolds, Putnam Investments president.