Darius McDermott, managing director of Chelsea Financial Services, said he can see why the investors decided to make the switch when looking at the performance of the fund over the past 12 to 18 months.
He said this move doesn’t look good for the Gars fund, and is on the back of a difficult year performance-wise where Aviva have outperformed them.
However, he said: “I don’t think it’s a disaster, particularly when you look at the total asset value of the Gars fund, when you’re running £26bn, a divestment of £170m is not a killer."
Mr McDermott pointed out that, when it launched, Gars was the only type of fund of its type retail investors could gain access to.
“I think it took a lot of assets and has done well over the long-term, but what you might find now is more asset managers launch similar funds in the retail space, and you might find people choosing to diversify across these other strategies.
“I think that is already a trend which is well underway.”
He also pointed out, there are a lot of people who were involved in Gars at the start who are now running competing products.
“People want low risk and steady return, and the product which can offer that most consistently will probably take the most money.”
