Fidelity has removed the Aviva Investors Multi Strategy Targeted Return mandate from its favourite funds list.
Fidelity runs the Select 50 list of its favourite funds for its retail platform clients and updates it every six months.
It selects the list based on funds that have performed well and 'customer benefits' criteria such as the willingness of the fund house to give a discount to Fidelity customers, the level and transparency of fees overall, and the level of access clients have to the fund manager.
According to an update on Fidelity's website, the Aviva Investors Multi Strategy Targeted Return fund was dropped from the list at the customer benefit analysis stage, with the fund selectors broadly happy with the performance.
The fund lost 6 per cent in the 2018 calendar year, compared with a loss of 2 per cent for the average fund in the FE Targeted Absolute Return sector in the same time period.
The update read: "[The fund's] benefits to customers (discounts etc) may have become more or less attractive relative to the other funds in its category. You should not necessarily view removal from the Select 50 as a reason to sell."
Two other funds were dropped from the list based on this criteria.
These were the £1.5bn JO Hambro UK Dynamic fund and Fidelity's own American Special Situations fund.
The JO Hambro fund is managed by Alex Savvides and has returned 21 per cent over the past three years, compared with a return of 18 per cent for the FE UK All Companies Index in the same time period.
Fidelity’s £910m mandate on the other hand was in the bottom quartile of all funds in the FE UT North America Retail sector over one, three and five years, having returned 22 per cent in three years, compared with 47 per cent for the UT North America sector as a whole.
Fidelity described the funds dropped at this stage as "highly rated" by its investment specialists.
"They have been replaced on the list by funds that scored more highly in our customer benefit analysis," it stated.
A representative of Aviva Investors said: "We believe our AIMS funds can play an important role in helping clients meet their long-term investment objectives.
"Last year we made changes to our liquid markets platform; establishing a combined multi-asset and macro function, additional hires in our strategy and AIMS portfolio management teams and materially increasing the resources in our equities business.
"We are now seeing the benefit of the changes across our AIMS range, with AIMS target return delivering a return of over 7 per cent in the first six months of this year and we continue to see interest from new and existing clients in the fund range."
A representative of JO Hambro Capital Management has been contacted for comment.
Meanwhile two other funds were removed for performance reasons, the Aberdeen Japanese Equity fund, a £72m mandate that was the worst performer in its sector over the past three years and the Columbia Threadneedle European Select fund.
Representatives of Aberdeen and Columbia Threadneedle declined to comment.
The Columbia Threadneedle European Select fund has performed well in recent years but the manager, Mark Nichols, departed the firm earlier this year to join Jupiter.
The Aberdeen Japanese Equity fund has been replaced on the list by the Lindsell Train Japanese Equity fund, run by Mike Lindsell, and the Man GLG Japan Core Alpha fund, which has struggled for performance in recent years, but has a strong track record since launch.
The US equity fund to be added to the list is Lazard US Concentrated Equity, while the Foresight UK Infrastructure Income, the Barings High Yield Bond fund and the Artemis Global Emerging Markets fund have also been added to the list.
david.thorpe@ft.com
