Insight Investment is to merge six of the eight retail funds it inherited from Rothschild Asset Management into its existing retail Oeic.
The mergers will take place on 31 October 2003, subject to Insight receiving the requisite shareholder approval, and follow the group's merger with Rothschild earlier this year.
The two survivors from the former Five Arrows range are the £27m Monthly Income Bond fund run by Lucy Speake, Ingrid Iversen and Daniel Fox, and the £11m European Bond portfolio managed by Adrian Grey.
These two funds will move into the Insight retail Oeic, with the former to sit in the group's lower-risk part of the range, entitled Classic. The latter will be among the higher risk portfolios, called Professional.
Of the Five Arrows funds to disappear, European Opportunities, Asian Opportunities, Japanese Opportunities and North American Opportunities will merge into Insight's European Discretionary, Asia Pacific Equity, Japan Equity and US Equity respectively. The former Five Arrows UK Major Companies fund will merge into Insight's UK Equity, while the largest ex-Rothschilds portfolio, the £44m UK Smaller Companies, will become part of Insight UK Small Cap.
The group aligned the managers on all these portfolios earlier in the year to ease the transition process.
Retail managing director at the group David Norman said the principal benefit of the mergers to investors would be to improve economies of scale, resulting in lower expense ratios and thereby potentially improving performance.
Free switches will also be possible across the group's 26 funds. Norman said: 'The simplification of our fund proposition is a logical and positive step forward. Importantly, the move will deliver real benefits to investors.
'From an administrative point of view, having all the funds serviced from the same platform will bring reduced costs and improved service levels.'
Insight is currently in the process of mailing details of the proposed mergers to shareholders and affected advisers.