Past performance, as the financial institutions are regularly forced to tell us, is no guide to future returns.

But while a good track record offers no guarantee of a good performance in the future, it may be of some help to ordinary retail investors in finding their way through a daunting array of investment products.

Much of the focus when assessing the new investment products on offer under the Government's Special Savings Incentive Scheme has centred on the cost of the packages and associated charges.

However, consumers may also find it useful to consider underlying factors such as historic performance, investment strategy and the expertise of the investment team. As of last Friday, 14 financial institutions had announced equity-based investment options to take advantage of the Government scheme, including the life assurance subsidiaries of the two main banks - AIB's Ark Life and Bank of Ireland's Lifetime - Irish Life & Permanent, Ulster Bank, TSB, First Active and EBS Building Society.

Investment firms offering products included Aberdeen Asset Management, Canada Life, Eagle Star, Friends First, Hibernian, New Ireland and Quinn Life.

The unit-linked funds on offer range from all-cash funds to high-risk technology funds, although most institutions are placing an emphasis on the middle-of-the-range managed or balanced funds.

Figures supplied by Moneymate, which measures the performance of mutual funds, provide a useful comparison of the performance of managed funds of the leading investment firms over the one-, three- and five-year periods to the start of April.

Ulster Bank and TSB are not included in the tables as the equity funds they are offering under the new scheme are managed by Hibernian and Irish Life respectively, while Friends First provides the investment service for First Active. Aberdeen is also excluded as its retail funds are managed outside the Republic and are not monitored by Moneymate, while Quinn Life does not offer a managed fund.

The figures reflect the performance of lump sums invested over the period whereas, under the Government scheme, savers will be putting money aside on a monthly basis. Nonetheless, they provide a broad guide to the recent performance of the various fund managers although they do not reflect the performance of specialist funds.

Bank of Ireland-owned New Ireland emerges as the top performer over all time frames, providing the greatest returns over three and five years, while it reported the best outturn in the one-year category - a difficult period for most fund managers given the level of market volatility.

Canada Life, whose funds are managed by its Dublin-based investment company, Setanta, set up three years ago, also fares well, coming in second over the three- and five-year periods, which provide a more representative guide to performance than a single year.

Ark Life fares worst over the crucial three- and five-year periods, while Irish Life's actively managed fund also proves a laggard.

Another factor that investors should take into account is the investment approach adopted by the fund manager.

The biggest differentiating factor here is between funds that take an active approach to investing their clients' money - picking those companies and sectors they think will perform best - and those that plump for a passive investment approach - tracking a given index.

Chief among the companies that opt for the passive approach is Irish Life & Permanent, whose Scope series of funds are index-linked, unlike its managed funds.

Quinn Life, set up by the Quinn Group in January 2000 to sell pension and investment products directly over the telephone, also tracks share indices.

The Cavan-based company offers investors participating in the Government savings scheme a choice of two funds - an Irish equity fund, which tracks the performance of the top 20 companies listed on the ISEQ, and a Euro equity fund that is based on the Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50 index.

Advocates of a passive investment approach argue that, over the long term, stock market indices tend to outperform actively managed funds.

They also point out that passive funds tend to be cheaper because there is no need for expensive fund management expertise.

Opponents of this approach believe that through judicious stock selection, a good fund manager should be able to beat the market, particularly when it is on the way down.

However, those who plump for index-linked funds have the comfort of knowing that, while they may not achieve top returns, they are unlikely to end up in a fund that comes bottom of the league table.