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Royal Bank of Scotland's four new multi-manager funds have virtually identical managers to Norwich Union's manager of manager range, with only a few differences in asset allocation and fees.

The RBS Income and Cautious Growth funds will sit in the Cautious Managed peer group along with the £1m Norwich MOM Income and £6.7m MOM Cautious funds.

RBS Balanced Growth will take its place in Balanced Managed by the £12.9m Norwich MOM Balanced fund. RBS Adventurous Growth will join the £6.7m Norwich MOM Growth fund in Active Managed.

The initial charge for the RBS funds will be 5 per cent, with an AMC of 1.2 per cent. Morley Fund Management will allocate the funds' assets on a top-down basis. Close Investments will pick the underlying investments. The portfolios will be branded Expert Managed Solutions.

The roles for Morley and Close are the same for the Norwich Union vehicles. However, the Norwich Union managers of managers have a three-year track record, slightly differing asset allocation and higher AMCs of between 1.6-1.8 per cent.

The UK equity components of both income funds will be split between the same five fund houses, including New Star Asset Management and Lazard Asset Management. Gartmore Investment and Aegon Asset Management take on the fixed interest segments.

But the RBS fund has given additional mandates to six overseas equity managers, plus greater fixed interest allocation with extra mandates for Morley and Rogge Global Partners.

Both firms' Cautious and Balanced funds have identical managers to the RBS Income fund, although the RBS vehicles have property mandates for Morley and upper limits on their equity allocation. The managers on the funds in the Active Managed sector are identical to Cautious and Balanced, although do not include the property and fixed income components.

An RBS spokesperson said: "Our range of collective investment funds are unique in offering customers access to commercial property markets, the option of lower-risk funds for the cautious investor and shorter term alongside traditional longer-term tactical asset allocation."

But James Dalby, fund development manager at Norwich Union, pointed out the TERs on the Norwich Union funds were 1.83 per cent on average compared with an estimated 1.98 per cent for the RBS funds.