Instreet Investment has decided to wind up its Reliance fund range after the products proved to be too complex for retail investors.
The Instreet Reliance Commodities Fund and the Instreet Reliance Global Allocation Fund will be closed shortly.
"We are finding more and more that simplicity and transparency is what counts. That is why we are phasing out our Reliance funds," Instreet Investment managing director George Lucas said.
The funds were a type of structured product, with the commodities fund investing in the Schroder Alternative Solutions Commodity Fund, and the global allocation invested in the BlackRock Global Funds Global Allocation Fund.
The funds offered investors capital protection against market falls, but they did not offer a guarantee.
Therefore, the investment returns depended on how much volatility an investor endured during the life of the investment, as this would determine the cost of the protection against drops in the market.
"With those funds, it is not transparent to the investor what the final outcome will be - it is path dependent," he said.
"You start off at A and you get to Y and the way you get there will determine how your investment will do," Lucas said. "You don't know until the investment is over what the actual cost ends up to be."
"The issue that you get back is if [the cost] is low the investor will be very happy, because they made more money than they expected.
"But if it's higher than expected then it is hard to explain to the investor why, because you are getting in a very theoretical finance discussion," Lucas said.
Instreet has, therefore, decided to close down the funds and they are currently not open for new business.
"We are winding it down now, so there is very little left - probably less than $1 million," Lucas said. "They should be closed very soon."
Instreet also offers structured products with a defined investment outcome.
"In our Link products and Mast products you start at A and get to Y and how you get there is irrelevant," Lucas said.
These products have seen good inflows, attracting about $50 million in the three-month period to the end of June this year.
About 80 to 90 per cent of investors in these products are self-managed super funds.
