Financial boost for investment funds

The number of investment funds that performed significantly worse than the market has almost halved in the last six months, according to a study.

Online investment service Bestinvest identified 77 so-called dog funds in its latest report. It is a drop from the 150 funds that the company listed six months ago.

HBOS, which is owned by Lloyds Bank, was the provider with the largest amount of customers’ money invested in these funds.

It knocked Invesco off its perch at the bottom of the pile, a dubious honour it had held in six of the previous biannual reports.

HBOS had £6.85 billion of its investors’ cash in five of these underperforming funds, while Invesco had £5 billion in three.