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Advisers and investors do not need any reminding that these are troubled times. At the time of writing, the casualty list has claimed - or come perilously close to claiming - major names. Bear Stearns, Lehmans, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch and even Goldman Sachs. HBOS looks set to become LBOS. Bradford & Bingley counts Northern Rock as family. Short selling has been banned in the UK and the US.

There are also plenty of walking wounded and those still standing can be excused for feeling fearful and confused. Certainly that could explain the recent frenzied press activity from the IMA, which has been busy lashing out at structured investments, before suggesting they have been misquoted.

The IMA has, among other things, labelled structured investments as “not to be taken at face value” and being “largely free from regulatory oversight”.

Its criticism used guaranteed equity bonds from National Savings & Investments as an example, contrasting returns with index trackers, but concluding with an industry wide castigation of all things structured, asserting that investors “may not realise how much return they are giving up in order to be protected against what is a rare event”.

It has been knockabout stuff, kicking off with Mr Saunders highlighting recent IMA research, while touting the benefits of traditional funds, which apparently manage risk based on the only ingredients that investors need to concern themselves with: “diversification” and “time”. Mr Jenkins, meanwhile, used an FSA conference speech on the credit crunch to make similar comments.

However, the IMA is overtly missing the point. Further, the simplistic approach has done little more than highlight a fundamental lack of knowledge of structured investments. But, the IMA has been unnecessarily provocative – because not only is there no need for the £4trn traditional funds industry to try to conjure up and invoke dogma and divide based on nothing more substantive than a “my sector good, your sector bad” argument, but such an argument surely doesn’t serve anyone’s best interests. Certainly not investors, but, actually, not the IMA’s either.

Instead, especially in such challenging investment times, investment industry professionals should all be serving investors’ best interests, seeking to raise our game constructively and collectively.

That investors’ best interests were ignored by the IMA could perhaps have been an oversight. But, on reflection, it is obvious that investors were not overlooked because it is investors who have caused the IMA to suddenly stand up and proclaim its virtues and attack others.

The figures show the facts - investors voting with their feet, walking away from traditional investment funds. By contrast, the structured products industry is experiencing exponential sales growth worldwide, as investors demonstrate what is important to them.

No matter what the IMA says, investors are demonstrating what they find important and are looking for in the current environment.

As economic growth slows, stock market volatility increases and the “ride-with-the-trend easy money” of recent years disappears two factors stand out.

First, investors want to control portfolio risk - reducing or removing it. Second, with likely slower market growth ahead, investors want to enhance and maximise portfolio returns from available future growth.

Intelligent structured investments can deliver on these key points by definition. And, with the scope for structured investments to redefine the risk and return profiles of an unparalleled array of markets and asset classes, the industry data is indeed dramatic.

The IMA’s advice is that long-term market risk and long-term downside based upon historical evidence are rare events, so investors should not pay to protect capital. It also asserts that traditional funds “manage risk” through diversification and time.

That is correct up to a point. But, while long-term market downside may indeed be a historically rare event, five-year market losses are not so far in the distant memory as to have been forgotten and neither is the current environment and future outlook likely to persuade investors that investing is a risk-free game.

Even though actively managed funds increasingly use techniques to manage risk, they depend upon educating investors to understand and accept the concepts of diversification and time.

Look at the performance-related losses of funds across the IMA’s 30 sectors to see this fact in practice. This includes some of the best funds run by some of the best providers with the best managers. It is evident that the claims to “manage risk” are entirely subject to the effectiveness and efficacy of active fund managers and their processes. As everyone knows, much data shows active fund managers routinely fail against their benchmarks.

Not all investors have the wealth to diversify portfolios across all 30 IMA sectors. Neither do all investors have the time to let diversification work. In fact, time is the great healer for an industry that, by definition, cannot adequately “control” risk.

While not all structured products are the same, most deliver pre-defined capital protection or at least known and direct control of investment risk. Full capital protection is common, while contingent capital protection that utilises deep downside barriers, allowing for enhanced performance upside, is increasingly popular with professional wealth managers.

The difference for investors boils down to the contrast between mutual funds that hope to manage risk, or structured investments that control risk.

The IMA’s “my way or the highway to hell with structured products” fails to recognise or empathise with the thinking, interests and expectations of many investors.

Any investor, if presented with a choice, wants 20:20 foresight in terms of knowing and being able to assess any investment risk that they may encounter. No investor chooses investment risk for the sake of it. Yet nearly all mutual funds carry varying degrees of investment risk. Structured investments, however, can precisely set out the parameters of any investment risk, and offer protection.

Capital protection within an investment has a cost but that is because it has a value. Consumers who take out car or home insurance, but who do not claim, do not subsequently complain because they do not have a car crash or get burgled. Neither do they find this insurance worhtless for what are also rare events.

If clients could design their own utopian investments, how many would map out anything that resembles a traditional mutual fund? Many would design their own investments upon the following lines: to reduce or remove risk; enhance and maximise returns; and minimise or take out all fees and commissions.

Intelligent structured investments come close to delivering the approach that investors would choose for themselves. That is why investors are voting with their feet, actively choosing structured investments in the real world.

It should not be a case of all things structured at the expense of all funds active and traditional. Actually, the structured products industry has left itself significant room to improve. Many providers agree with the IMA, but only on some of its comments, for some of the providers and some of the products.

There is a difference between what can be defined as “easy structured products”, designed by institutions who prioritise scale and volume because they own proprietary distribution channels, as opposed to “intelligent structured investments” developed by specialist structured asset management firms who operate within independent wealth management channels, where advisers select products on merit and relevance.

At the intelligent end the industry is offering increased innovation with increased investment integrity, which is opening up the full benefits and unique advantages of structured investments to an ever-wider audience of receptive wealth management specialists and their clients.

Intelligent structured investments offer exceptional flexibility to meet genuine portfolio planning and asset allocation needs. This does not mean “plain-vanilla” products linked to indices such as the FTSE100, just because certain providers think investors need the reassurance of a familiar index and a big-brand name.

There are clearly stellar funds in the traditional mutual funds world. However, there are also superior structured investment providers and products in the structured sector. The key word has to be differentiation.

Most wealth managers undertake objective and robust due diligence processes that filter and screen 2000 mutual funds down to so-called “white lists” of 150-200 funds. In other words, they identify, select and utilise the best funds for clients and avoid the mediocre and lame dogs. The exact same process can and should be applied to the structured investments universe.

Pragmatic wealth management specialists should differentiate, select and align the best wealth management funds and propositions for clients within investment industries and sectors – not dogmatically differentiate between entire investment universes.

It makes no sense for anyone to perpetuate dogma and divide.

Chris Taylor is chief executive of Blue Sky Asset Management