Axa Life Invest has pulled its suite of hybrid drawdown-annuity products five months after the most recent version, Secure Advantage+, was launched.
The company said in a statement it would cease new sales of the Secure Advantage products in both the UK and France, "with immediate effect".
"The decision to stop the distribution Secure Advantage has been taken following a detailed strategic review of the market, and the economic and regulatory factors affecting the sale of unit-linked investments in the UK and France," the firm stated on Friday (7 October).
"Policy holders who have Secure Advantage or Secure Advantage+ products will continue to benefit from the guarantees that are currently in place."
Axa Life Invest did not specify in its statement whether or not low take-up was to blame for withdrawing the products.
At its launch in May, Axa pitched Secure Advantage+ as a "new kind of guarantee" for the post-pension freedoms landscape.
It explained the design as follows: "Available across a pension, offshore bond and Trustee Investment Plan, policyholders get a minimum of 80 per cent of what they put in. If their investment grows sufficiently, the lock-in feature converts to 110 per cent of their pension pot and can result in greater gains if markets continue to rise, through additional threshold steps of 10 per cent.
"Once the investment has risen, to 110 per cent or beyond, it will never go down again unless they make any surrenders or transfers from the guaranteed part of their Plan."
A number of providers - including MetLife and Aegon - have launched hybrid drawdown products since pension freedoms came into effect in April 2015.
So far, however, uptake has not been high, with sales still dwarfed by annuity sales by 50 to 1.
While some advisers have taken to the products, others have been put off by the complex design and the comparative expense.
james.fernyhough@ft.com
